I think it might be helpful to analyse Carol's paper as the product of higher
ed academic activity -- and this does include recognizing the ensemble of
goals in that setting which play out in what she decided to write about.
Peter S. points out that Carol is, and has always been there, arguing for the
children, and my reading of Carol's paper agrees with Peter's comment. The
funny thing thing is, recognizing Phillip W.'s comments, that most elementary
teachers are also, and have also always been, there for the children.
Carols' paper is not for, and need not be for, elementary teachers. It's
really for people who design learning environments, such as in NWU where
Carol works, or at UMich, or MIT, or TERC (or BBN if it still existed) --
especially those places where the cognitive paradigm, cousin of AI, has
reigned supreme.
But I'm convinced that education is as highly complex and dynamic as human
activity goes. The stakeholders in a child's success go beyond the immediate
realm of the child's parents and teacher to the principal, school board,
state DOE, and federal government. The reason I chose the Pollack analogy in
the previous post was because Pollack put his canvas on the floor. Unlike
previous artists, there was no priviledged perspective to his work, no up or
down. He worked from all sides and when he created he was *inside* the
painting.
There are also things influencing the child's classroom, including the content
curricula and methods (e.g. TERC's Investigations for math; reading and
writing workshops for literacy), classroom/school management methods (e.g.
Open Circle) and then there are the learning environments ( which arguably
is a self-glorification of "educational software"). In the elementary grades
I don't think the design of computer based tools is really much of an issue,
cultural or otherwise. Computers are not what elementary children spend much
time working on during the day, and there really does not seem to be any
silver software bullets out there for learning maths or reading or writing in
the elementary grades -- great learning moments can happen with ordinary
stuff: pumpkin seeds, pencils, pens, 100's charts, unifix cubes, etc.
Science can be done with a magnifying glass and with things that float (or
not) in the water. What's really essential is dialogue. Dialogue with the
stuff, with peers, and with the teacher.
Sure, I see the tech can be helpful for the elementary teacher (any one doing
any of that kind of software design?) For example, I've observed the use of
a laptop to store the audio of running records -- saved to CD, the recordings
are random access and are far superior to audio tape for more careful
analysis and also for parent conferences. But that is using the built-in
recording features of the operating system software. It's a freebie that
comes with the computer.
Computer technology, with its rapid development, economically stresses
schools. New processors continue to double in speed every 18 months and max
hard drive storage doubles in size every year. Network speeds writ large are
doubling every year. That means computers available in three years will be 4
times faster and have 8 times the storage of one available now. I'm
considering more and more the possibility that the digital divide might
really not be so much about who has computers (and learning environments) in
their school and who doesn't, but that it is about the difference between
those schools that can afford computers and those schools who marginally can,
spending more money on techology than is wise and that soon will be obsolete.
Design-wise, I'm into the open-source movement. New wine in old computers
(pun intended for you linux geeks).
The question I have is, How can activity theory contribute to the better of
this situation? Can it address the tensions in a system caused by an ensemble
of rapidly changing artifacts (i.e. computer technology), together with rapid
change in rules (e.g. "no child left behind"), steady change in subject (e.g.
Phillip's students are new to him every year and are also most likely
changing in their diversity)? Are there patterns that researchers can detect
on the whole so that teachers can find some islands of stability in this
dynamic complexity?
-- ----------------- bb
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 01 2003 - 01:00:12 PST