Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate and Create: Final Thoughts

I’m so grateful for this class. It was the best way to end the day even when we had already been at school for six hours, I looked forward to the time I spent learning about technology and it’s impact on cognition. The culminating moment of this class was the oxford-style debate in which I sat on the opposite side of the room and argued that smart technology is making us dumber. I was frustrated and emotionally unprepared to argue the counter defense to my own personal beliefs. My life is entrenched in technology and everyday I’m grateful for it! Let’s take a step back and review my process and journey of this course.

I knew that I was a heavy media user. I was raised by a family that incorporates technology in all that we do and we are known for our annual entries into the K-12 PTA Reflections program (using eight different mediums to create artistic products). Yet it was eye opening for me to track my media usage at the beginning of the semester. I’ve kept the app on my phone and in the last 30 days I have used my phone for 5 days 16 hours 41 minutes and 16 seconds. Excessive? Maybe. Yet I’m not the only one. We learned in class discussions and from the Kaiser Foundation article that society continues to increase in technology use! Teenagers (especially the pre-teens) are spending hours of screen time per day. Even children zero to eight are exposed to this technology! In my literature review, I discovered an article by Mark Prensky entitled Turning on the Lights (2008) in which he explains the concept that when students come into our classroom they are no longer unenlightened, but they have already been exposed to the world through the technology available to them! The media is ubiquitous. We just need to learn how to use it.

As I sat on the wrong side of the podium in that stinkin’ debate, I threw around the argument that Nick Carr (2011) makes over and over in his published literature. The brain is affected by technology. Our brain develops back to front and leaves those frontal lobe reasoning and logic skills for the end, also the synapses require multiple pathways to ensure increased recall of the information that was brought to our mind. We must pay attention to the surrounding stimuli (this really dives into the cognitive learning theories). With the constant technology influx Carr believes that we are losing our ability to think deeply and pay attention to the things around us. I respectfully disagree with Carr. I believe that technology is changing our brains and that our brains will adapt to the new ways of learning. We are able to expose ourselves to all sorts of information and it is fine to have knowledge that is a mile long and only an inch deep. All of us will choose our own focuses in life and then we will use our mile long knowledge to deepen our understanding of the things we love. I believe that the vast amount of information gives us the chance to make connections and build the skills (higher-order skills) of the frontal lobe even at an earlier age. This is a good thing – of course technology changes our brain!

Now, flashback to Prensky who coined the term Digital Natives, he was one of the pioneers to envision a cultural shift. He saw that there was a difference in the way children were learning, growing, interacting, speaking and writing. There has been an actual shift in our very culture! Kids these days are not the same as the kids of the past. Our culture is being shifted globally in a horizontal fashion! Facebook is changing the way we view friendships and personal interactions. We have a digital identity within our digital spaces that we’ve created. In our debate we discussed the shy boy that doesn’t have any friends at school, but when he goes home he plays King of Legends (is that what it is called?) and he is the leader of the game! He has friends and is able to exhibit leadership skills that his classroom teacher has never seen! I can see the argument against this (I stood on that side of the room) but I do believe that it is fine for children to have these different experiences! Childhood and adolescent years is all about creating who we are! They don’t need to know who they are yet and our children should take advantage of the technology to discover and create their identity.

Technology is a two-edged sword. It is powerful and effective when used appropriately, but can be detrimental if not honed correctly. As teachers we have the chance to enrich our classrooms with devices, apps, programs, and software – ultimatelyredefining the way we teach. We also may be the teacher who takes our transparencies and slap them onto a PowerPoint (simply substituting the same old way we’ve taught). The evidence shows that students are learning differently, thus we need to be teaching differently! We need to be using our resources to stay updated on the best products out there and use them in the most powerful ways we can discover. I also believe that as leaders of technology in education we have the responsibility to share what we learn. If we use a terrible app and it flops, then we need to pass on the information to our colleagues. We can be presenters at conferences and contributors in technology blogs and twitter conversations. We have the ability to not only increase the higher level skills of our students, but also to increase our own. Technology is here to stay – how are we going to face the challenge? Will we fight against the shift? Or will we open the gates and embrace the change; striving to become a Digital Native?

Links

http://kff.org/other/event/generation-m2-media-in-the-lives-of/

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9z8jj1wUqldWlZVZTkxeWZ2R1E/edit?pli=1

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar08/vol65/num06/Turning-On-the-Lights.aspx

http://pdk.sagepub.com/content/92/4.toc

We've Got the HOTS for Technology!

The most widely accepted framework for higher order thinking is Bloom’s taxonomy. Bloom gives us the lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) as well as the higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) in six umbrella verbs: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Under these major verbs we hear other skills like synthesizing, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, reasoning, logic, collaboration, inferring, reflection, hypothesizing etc. As educators, we are constantly trying to engage students in tasks that will require them to deepen their thinking levels.

As culture has shifted with the turn of the century, we have seen a greater focus on the higher-order thinking skills. Why is this? I’m sure there are many factors that increase the need for higher-order thinking skills, but in my opinion I believe it comes back to technology. The more advanced our technology becomes we have devices, software, and computer programming that completes the lower order thinking skills for us. I would argue that it is not necessary for a successful adult in the 21^st century to need to know how to solve the inequality of a parabola in everyday life, because even experts in the field will be using calculators to graph such functions to minimize human error. The computer devices are performing the menial and lower level thinking so we need to “up our game” as humans and reach wider and deeper. The higher order thinking gives us the ability to decipher the information that we are obtaining from the devices and create meaningful analysis and evaluation.

We are the technology leaders of the education field! So what is the impact of technology upon our development of these higher order thinking skills? First of all, as we discussed in depth during our in-class debate, when used incorrectly technology can have a negative impact on our ability to think deeply and create linear thought. If we aren’t paying attention to the stimulus around us and processing the information we receive then we are missing out on developing any and all of the HOTS.

On the flip side, when technology is incorporated effectively, the world opens up to our students and we now have opportunities that before were limited. Creation is the pinnacle of higher-order thinking skills and technology gives students the opportunity to quickly and easily create a digital product – Padlet, Popplet, Powtoon, Prezi, PowerPoint, Podcast (and these are only ones that start with P!)– Which they can then share with their peers. Teachers can give students the opportunity to make the choice as to which technology medium is best used for their project-based learning, thus building the problem solving and decision making higher-order thinking skills. Blogging provides an excellent platform for long-term reflective writing. Using an in-class twitter feed gives students a chance to express their hypothesis or inference in real-time before the class continues forward with the science experiment. Teachers should take the time to practically review the latest technology available and then try it in the classroom to see what ways it can be used to enhance and promote the development of higher order thinking skills for their students. After all, isn’t this what teaching is all about? So let’s make it fun.

Also. I found this awesome site that has a rollover interactive piece that meshes together Bloom's HOTS and the knowledge dimensions!

Sources: http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/

Learning and Tech

How does/can technology impact or enhance sensory perception, processing, and storage? (Cognitivism)

Technology has a great impact on our brains. Researchers like Nicholas Carr believe that the influx of technology is causing too much input and that because of the constant distractions caused by the Net and smart devices we are not giving our brains enough to process the sensory input in order to create pathways for the storage of knowledge. Is this changing the way we learn? Are we unable to learn with the mass amounts of technology that has us constantly plugged in? In my opinion, if the technology is used effectively it can greatly enhance learning. Using technology in the classroom gives teachers an easy way to build multiple networks and pathways among the neurons that gives the brain an opportunity to rehearse and encode the information. If we think outside of the box we can come up with many ideas for using technology in a cognitive-based teaching approach, such as using Slidesnack or narrated PowerPoints to give the added bonus of the audio in a flipped classroom. Teachers can record a podcast of the spelling words and link it to the class website. Students can use Popplett to create graphic organizers that give the mind the opportunity to sort, organize and recall the information. When used correctly technology provides the means to differentiate the learning and build thorough connections among neruo-pathways giving students the maximum ability to learn

How does/can technology utilize the brain's reward systems to reinforce learning? (Behaviorism)

            We know from our in-class demonstration by Kumen and Aaron that when we participate in a game we are boosted with dopamine that makes us happy, even if we are engaged in something silly like creating an outhouse! This comes from the internal joy of winning. Our brain releases the dopamine when we feel that a reward has been presented and then we are more inclined to repeat the behavior to experience another round of dopamine. Behaviorists believe that this is the true indication that learning has taken place. Teachers can use the reward system to impact learning and technology provides an increased variety of ways to reinforce the learning that has taken place. The behaviorist approach to technology is most commonly found in educational apps and games – any sort of drill, skill, and kill type of game that provides instant feedback to our behavior gives us the shot of dopamine (or) the absence of that dopamine that shapes our future actions. Teachers can use formative assessments like Kahoot to keep students engaged in the teaching process and with instant feedback to their responses. Technology can also be used for classroom management by using apps like Class Dojo or Bouncing Balls. Technology has been revolutionary for the behaviorism movement due to the instant gratification and feedback for the millennial generation.

How does/can technology engage students' emotions in learning? How does/can technology expose students to a variety of models to enhance learning by observation? (Social Learning)

            When a baby is introduced to the world they are placed in the arms of their parents and their first encounter with society begins. We are constantly looking to learn from those that are around us. Research has been done in many situations regarding the effect of social interaction on young children. We learn how to respond to the world around us by watching the reaction of others. For example, if our daddy jumps out of his seat and his face shows joy when the blue football player runs across the white line it appears that the blue team makes daddy happy. However, when the yellow team crosses the same white line, daddy gets mad, clenches his fist and yells at the TV – logically we learn that daddy does not like the yellow team. This same approach to learning continues throughout school and children are able to regulate their own learning based off of how they observe and model the behavior of others. We have discussed in class how technology has been influential to autistic children that struggle to interpret the emotions of others because now they are able to observe these emotions in a less threatening environment using iPad apps. Children also are given opportunities to learn from experts without the necessity of leaving the classroom just by pulling up youtube! Video conferencing, interactive whiteboards for flipped classrooms, listening to a podcast that portrays a similar debate to the one your students are preparing for.  The uses to technology are limitless!  I personally love photography because a picture is worth a thousand words – so a teacher could pull up pictures from National Geographic to bring in the stories of other cultures and religions.

How does/can technology immerse students in enriched learning environments? How does/can technology promote consideration of multiple perspectives and the social negotiation of understanding? (Constructivist)

            Technology gives us the opportunity to create!  As we are paying attention to the input that comes from the consequences of society upon our actions to the outside world we take all of that information and strive to “make sense” of the world around us. I believe that all learning theories are used during the process of learning and that constructivism is the pinnacle point of learning. If a student is able to construct their own sense of the information they received then they become knowledgeable – learning has occurred. Technology can be used for project based learning and assessment. Instead of a standardized test on slavery the students can create a digital story showing what they have learned, they can travel through a web quest which leads them to constructing understanding from outside sources. They can use their blog as a way to reflect on the knowledge and piece together their final thoughts. Constructivism is extremely adaptable to technology because it allows students the freedom to explore and differentiate their learning.

            I believe in a mixed method learning theory. I believe learning is constructed by observing others in our environment by which we then take the experiences and encode them as knowledge, relying on rehearsal to cement these ideas until our behavior changes to support our understanding of the new knowledge.

Sources

Carr, N., (2011) The juggler’s brain.Phi Delta Kappan, 92(4). Retrieved from http://pdk.sagepub.com/content/92/4.toc

Who am I and Who are They?

·         How does identity develop over the lifespan?

All of us our on a quest to discover and create who we are. Throughout our life we are faced with decisions and exposure to cultures that give us opportunities to create relationships, explore options, and eventually construct a “presence.” Erickson teaches that from birth we are faced with crises, such as trust vs mistrust, autonomy vs shame and guilt, industry vs inferiority, etc. and each of us must resolve these major crises when they arise. For example, as a baby the primary crises is our ability to trust our caregiver. If we are able to successfully resolve this issue and gain trust for those around us, we will carry with us a sense of control over our environment which has an overarching effect on our identity. Bronfenbrenner teaches that we are faced with cultures and subcultures, starting with our family and moving outward to our school, peers, and religious identities. In the overlapping areas where these cultures clash we face moments to explore who we are. It can be as simple as Christensen’s love ice cream, but my friends are addicted to exercise. This can become a point where we must shape our identity! Do I love ice cream? Do I love exercise? Is it possible to be an ice cream loving exercise enthusiast? Throughout life we bring other influencing cultures in and they shape our overall sense of self, which begs the question: do we ever really know who we are?

·         How do modern children and adolescents differ from their predecessors?

In regards to identity, there is a vast difference between modern children and their predecessors. Previously, most identity was passed from father to son, teacher to student, and expert to novice; this is called a vertical transfer. In modern day culture we say a greater shift to a horizontal approach to passing the idea of identity – student to student, professional to professional, and sibling to sibling.

·         How does technology impact the development of identity?

We have seen this shift throughout history, but the primary reason for this shift towards horizontal transfer at this time is because of the impact of technology on the development of identity. Technology provides the opportunity for collaboration and connection to others who were not previously accessible. We are also surrounded by information that gives children and adolescents greater access to doors that may have been previously closed. A teenager in 1915 may have only seen the small window of becoming the owner of the family farm, but a teenager in 2015 will be exposed to farming, architecture, engineering, and corporate careers simply by pulling up YouTube on a rainy day.

·         How does social media, in particular, impact the development of identity?

Social media provides children and adolescents the opportunity to connect, but specifically it gives them an opportunity to create their “online presence.” The article we read for class "The Internet and Youth Culture" explored the idea that as we are exposed to new sites and ways to connect online then we must discover how we want to be presented - are we an online introvert or a world wide web extrovert? Who are we when we post on Facebook? What message do we want to send in our Instagram? Are we tweeting our true thoughts? Do the blogs we write represent our opinions and stances? Do we feel that our Pinterest boards show our passion that we feel for Harry Potter? Does Tumblr think we are as hysterical as we think we are? Social media is a brand new aspect to history and it is changing the development of identity by creating a whole new aspect of self.

·         How can we use technology to help students explore and express their identities?

Educators are given the opportunity to help students express their identities by offering them choice, exploration, and exposure to many avenues. As technology teacher-leaders we can also teach our students how to create a responsible and strong online presence. We can help our students become aware that they have a digital footprint and how their actions online are just as real as the actions in offline life. The assignments we create can be tailored to help students distinguish who they are and who they want to become, and we can use positive reinforcement to provide support as they embark on this lifelong process of developing identity.

Sources: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9z8jj1wUqldeFJXSkZWR0IwMzA/view

Culture

Last night I was sitting at the kitchen table eating ice cream with my family and I began a conversation with my dad about technology.  My dad is a computer hardware engineer and knows quite a bit about technology and creating soundboards and all sorts of stuff that I don’t understand, but it took him a good 3 months to figure out how to sufficiently text on his Galaxy 5S. He is one that tends to glorify the “good ol’ days” and looks fondly back on the times before all of his children were constantly plugged in. On Father’s Day, my dad was frustrated because he came into the living room on his special day and six out of six people were looking at six different screens. Laptops, cell phones, tablets, etc. Family time has been demolished, in his opinion, and it because of all these stupid devices! I was a bit nervous to open up this can of worms with my dad because I knew he had strong opinions on the matter, but I wanted to hear him out and understand why he believes the increased technology is bad.

The conversation that followed was insightful. I discussed the articles I’d read for class with him and referenced Digital Nation. We discussed how in Digital Nation they do a test on task switching and what the research is showing. My dad’s greatest concern is that there is an effect on the ability for the future generation to be creative because of all the distractions. He was explaining to me that there is process (obviously I don’t have any research on this because my dad just told me) that when someone is looking to create a new product or idea their brain needs at least 25 minutes to take the idea and piece the WHOLE product together in their mind. When a distraction comes it wipes the slate clean and they are back to rebuilding the full idea. The unanticipated issue is that each time we rebuild the idea in our mind we do it a little differently from the first time around and this is why our final products have more “bugs.” I was fascinated by this point and I believe to some extent it is a valid argument. We also had a deep conversation about the change in culture. I explained to my dad that we (I consider myself a digital native) truly believe that we are more effective when we are switching between tasks. I brought in this idea of a shift in culture, that our brains are learning in different ways and that we don’t even know what it is like any other way. I feel like the strongest point to be made is that this switch in culture, brain activity, and value focus has happened throughout all of history. This is not a new pattern, but it is following the exact pattern that human history has always followed.

Yes. There are human values and culture norms that I think are important to hold onto. I listed my opinion in my word cloud. Technology doesn’t necessarily diminish these values, but it does have an impact on how we define these values. We still value privacy, yet we allow Facebook to be an exception. Technology enables us to spend family time in different ways (skyping across the country, snap chatting with your boyfriend in Colorado, etc.). Technology shifts the way we socialize because it gives us different ways to communicate. We can communicate over broad expanses and reach out to many people at the same time, or we can still have a personal skype call or send a video through Pinterest messaging system. The way I see it is that we have more options on how we choose to communicate with those around us.

If you ask any teacher, they will tell you that technology has affected the culture of student bullying and harassment, but once again, this is not a new thing. Technology is not creating all of these world problems, but it is just transforming the current problems! We are experiencing this transfer of culture primarily in a horizontal direction, but that does not mean this is a bad thing. The bottom line, is that as teacher leaders in a digital age we must take the opportunity to embrace the cultural shift, accept that there will be those who do not want to accept the change, and do our best to diligently teach our students how to be polite citizens in this digital world. We are the leaders of this cultural shift because we are invested. We are involved in the conversation and we can see both sides of the argument. So, we must reach out and strengthen the values of society, yet give technology the “in” that it needs to continue to move progress forward. The shift in culture is not bad, it is just different.

Resources: 

http://video.pbs.org/video/1402987791/

Turning My Thoughts Inside Out

Over the weekend, I was diligently thinking about my homework – and I went saw the Disney Pixar movie Inside Out. I loved this movie! Not only was it a fun-family movie, but it also was interesting to make connections with the brain. At one point in the movie, the “emotions” in the brain are going through the process of taking the days memories and sending them to long term memory, and I turned to my sister and whispered “That’s called the hippocampus!” Obviously, this movie was not anatomically correct, nor did it remotely resemble the functions we know about the brain, but it was enjoyable to make the connections – my favorite part was when they went into the “abstract” thinking part of the brain.

In class we have discussed in depth the different theories behind cognitive development. Vygotsky and Piaget are the primary theorists discussed and although they have different findings, we are able to mesh together and interpret their findings compared to the development of the brain. The brain of a child develops from front to back. With this information we are able to correlate the research done by Vygotsky and Piaget who stated that there is a process / different stages of cognition that builds over time. The brain starts developing motor skills and automatic functions near the beginning of life – which runs parallel to the preoperational, operational, and the concrete operational theory.  The child continues to grow and they are able to understand the abstract more fully, which makes sense because the frontal lobe (which houses these higher order thinking skills) develops at a slower rate. 

During the learning process, neurons attach and create synapses. These neuro-pathways are strengthened as we receive increased exposure and a concept is reiterated when we create multiple pathways to recall the information. Vygotsky’s argument was founded on a social-constructivist theory, meaning that we take the information from our environment, culture, and dialogue and internalize that information until it becomes our very way of thinking. In my reflection, I’ve thought about how this shows that as we are interacting with our environment it is building multiple pathways through the maze of neurons in our brain.

The brain is always changing, and with those changes we are able to adapt to the circumstances around us. The influx in technology has, indeed, changed our brains, yet that does not necessarily mean it is destroying our brain. Children that are being raised as digital natives may have different problem solving skills, they may be able to think of concepts more abstractly due to the problem solving used during video games. Digital natives have created connections across many topics because of the quick access to multiple types of information. Digital natives are confronted with so much information that often they do not make strong synaptic connections in all these topics, but they still have many interconnected neuropaths to varying subjects. If I had to draw a picture of the world wide web, I would depict it as a massive connection of neurons and neuropathways! We are so connected! Our brain adapts to the media and we literally are retraining the way we think.

In conclusion, it is possible that we are seeing not a gradual adaptation, but actual evolution over the course of one generation. Our brains are changing and it is affecting the way children learn. So, the question is, how can we use the media that is in our classrooms to best utilize these new brain development patterns to maximize cognition? I don’t yet have an answer for that, but I’m hoping to have a greater grasp by the time I complete my Master’s program!

Sources:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html

First Attempt at a V-log!

I decided to create a vlog and reflect on what I'd learned in class by teaching it to someone else. I spent a lot of time today reviewing the genes to cognition website  in order to understand enough about the structure of the brain so that I could explain it effectively to a four year-old. I'm including the embedded video, but if that doesn't work the youtube link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdpes4o3nGg