Moving Full Steam Ahead with Technology in IDT

It has often been said in the past, and I'm sure I've mentioned it more than once over the course of the last year on this blog, that the students of today are the digital generation. To today's students, a portable device has become like another limb. Moving ahead over the next few years, I think that technology will be at the center of my duties in my future role as a school librarian. The school librarians of today are no longer just stewards of knowledge captured with a written word. Today's librarians are full-fledged media experts ready to assist with and provide instruction on technology. In this post, I will examine three areas of tech that can be applicable in the library context: using rich media, gamifying the classroom, and introducing virtual worlds.

Rich Media 

Rich media is defined as "instructional programs that incorporate high-end media such as video, animation, and audio" (Reiser & Dempsey, 2012, p. 310). The majority of core area teachers (math, science, social studies, and English) in Texas with access to technology in their classrooms or a designated computer lab day, are likely very familiar with rich media as it is defined by Reiser and Dempsey. Programs like Compass Learning and Imagine Learning are designed to deliver whole subject instruction with media integrated within the lessons. Studies have shown a positive correlation between using visuals to learn and test scores.

When looking at rich media, designers will take either a technology-centered or learner-centered approach. In a technology-centered approach, the designer asks themselves how media can be used to facilitate instruction. A big drawback of this approach is the fact that it "does not take the learner into account, including what is known about how people learn" (Reiser & Dempsey, 2012, p. 311). In a learner-centered approach the focus of designing instruction is on how to "serve the needs of the learners" (Reiser & Dempsey, 2012, p. 311). I believe, a program that is learner-centered would be something like Imagine Learning. Imagine Learning is essentially a program created and tailored specifically to ESL students for learning English. Built within the program are settings to accommodate for SPED and years within the USA. In that sense, the program is able to be tailored to the needs of the individual learner. Compass Learning which provides personalized learning paths is also basically learner-centered.

In a library setting, I think rich media in the sense that the authors have presented it as media-rich instructional programs, would be most likely utilized in a connected computer lab. I could see students coming in with a class and using the computers to follow a customized learning path in an assigned subject. That wouldn't necessarily assist the students with meeting objectives related to library skills; rather, it would further their acquisition of core area knowledge.

If I take rich media to mean using audio, images, video, or animations to assist with learning without the constraint of it being part of a program, more doors open. I could see myself using a variety of media to give a book talk and then designing a gallery walk for the students using QR codes. The students could scan the codes for access to media on the assigned station. To differentiate this for levels, students could be assigned a color or number and different colored QRs could be set in each location.

Now is this more useful than traditional classroom instruction? I think that really depends on how it is facilitated or how the program is structured. Compass Learning and Imagine Learning are both programs that I've used in the past. While they can work great, they also have their drawbacks. Juvenile graphics can be disengaging to older learners. Diagnostics to place students can be skewed based on student level of engagement and the ability to adjust for special needs. I had students in the past who would purposefully throw a diagnostic exam thinking that they would then have an easier time on the program. As a result, they were stuck with a lower-leveled path and ended up bored and disengaged with the content. At this point in time, an instructional computer program cannot gauge the level of interest and engagement of the student. Computers cannot see the body language of the student. As teachers we are constantly making snap judgements and adjusting lessons on the fly to meet the needs of our students based on what we see and hear in the classroom. Media-rich programs are great for providing individualized instruction, but they don't quite replace a teacher's intuition. I think media rich programs work best when used in tandem with a teacher who is throughly knowledgable about the program itself and the concepts being taught.  Unfortunately, that is usually not the case.

During my first three years teaching, we frequently were given new programs to use within the classroom. I thought, "Awesome! I love technology! This is going to rock!" The reality is that most of the time we were told we would be getting program x, it was installed on our computers, we were expected to be up and running on it while training the students to use it within a week, and we received NO or MINIMAL TRAINING on how to actually use the program. For a tech savvy person like me, this wasn't a big deal. For some of my fellow teachers it resulted in a lot of additional anxiety and confusion. It also added additional workload for all of us to learn the program in addition to planning regular lessons. I also would frequently end up giving up my planning periods to assist teachers in learning the programs.

Although many of the programs can be tailored for ESL/SPED, I have yet to see a program designed for general education use that tailors to specific disabilities like autism or ADHD. The majority of the accommodations built within the programs seem to be things like reduced answer choices or reading a text aloud. If I receive an IEP that says a student must have x, y, z accommodations and the computer program cannot provide it to them, then ethically I must find a way to make it happen. We can't just ignore an IEP because it's not build into a software program. With ESL students, programs can be set to understand that the student's first language is not English; however, most of them do not have a way to set the student's home language. As most ESL teachers are aware, there are many different language transfer errors that occur based on a student's home language. A program that isn't trained to catch and correct these transfer errors is not as useful as a teacher who can sit and explain it. As teachers do not typically have access to view all of the incorporated media within these programs, there is also the potential for hidden cultural bias and stereotypes within the media. The teacher can't screen for it ahead of time.

Gamifying the Classroom

Gamifying the classroom basically entails using game-play to facilitate instruction. Reiser and Dempsey offered a list of six essential elements for games. They must have:

1. A conflict or challenge that the student needs to solve
2. Rules of engagement aka the game rules to participate and win!
3. Particular goals or outcomes to achieve--I think of this in terms of a game's individual levels. Players usually need to complete a level to meet a goal and get to the next level in pursuit of the final outcome.
4. Continuous feedback-mostly implicit aka implied. This could be something as simple as characters reacting verbally within the game or gaining or losing points.
5. Interaction with the game environment.
6. A compelling storyline (2012, p. 321-22).

Game play has already been coming into the classroom via programs like Minecraft and Classcraft. Personally, I love the idea of using games in the classroom. Using games that focus around teamwork would help facilitate students working together. The video games presentation style may pull in students that are disengaged with off-screen learning. One of the biggest benefits is that most of these games (at least the ones I've come across) are centered around problem-based learning. Last week we discussed how today's students are being drilled to take exams and this has left many of them without the necessary skills to think critically about problems and find solutions. Gamification brings creative problem solving back into the classroom. It also has its drawbacks though.

As with many other classroom fads, it is certainly not one size fits all. As with anything, there will be students who don't like the concept. I have had students who don't like to be seated at a computer for long stretches of time. I think one of the biggest drawbacks to gamification is the points systems. While gaining the points themselves can be a motivator to students, many games contain built in leaderboards or class-wide progress boards. A student may not want others in the class to know how many points they do or do not have.

There are several games which tie student points to the performance of their teammates as well. If a team member does poorly or earns a demerit the entire team suffers. This may help facilitate an atmosphere where the team cheers each other on to do well, but it may go the other way. What happens if the team members decide to gang up on or bully a student they perceive as bringing them down within the game?

All these issues are in addition to those found in rich media programs I noted earlier. There are the same problems with ESL and SPED differentiation and potential bias. Gamifying the classroom also involves a lot of additional training or technical knowledge on behalf of the teacher. Teachers without training or who are less technically inclined would be at a disadvantage.

When I went to see what other people had to say on the issue of ethics in gamification I found many articles indicating that gamification was a bad idea in the work or classroom context including:

Gamifying the Classroom-Al Jazeera America

Gamification Or Manipulation? When Games At Work Are Not That Fun - Huffington Post

Looking at Bringing Gamification into the Classroom-Education World

In the school library context, I think I would be more apt to use a program like Classcraft. I could see myself using this for behavior management within the library and teaching concepts like digital citizenship.

Virtual Worlds in Instruction

Virtual worlds in instruction entail "environments...characterized by 3-D virtual environments that simulate real-world objects and interactions and are available to multiple users simultaneously, on a global basis" (Reiser & Dempsey, 2012, p. 334). Common attributes cited by Reiser & Dempsey include:

1. Shared online spaces that many people can enter at once.
2. A visual representation (room) in which many people can move at once.
3. The ability to interact with or manipulate your surroundings.
4. The world is always online whether the user is logged in or not.
5. Communities and groups are encouraged (2012, p. 334).

Most of the virtual worlds I've heard of in the past are basically games. The authors of the text note that unlike games, virtual worlds do not "impose goals upon users-they are user-created to fulfill a given need and/or goal" (2012, p. 334). 

I think virtual worlds would be most applicable in the classroom in terms of simulating situations. I think in the future it will push farther past being a simple 3-D or 2-D computer environment, to being actual VR. Earlier today I was reading a story about Microsoft's Hololens program. The program is still in it's early stages and thus very expensive, but I can see how it would be useful:

ClassVR by Avantis is an all-in-one solution to bringing virtual reality into the classroom. Since this is geared specifically toward classroom use, I think the backend programming would make up for some of the features a typical VR system would lack that would be necessary for school use like being able to control student identification:

I think within the classroom or library context, the push will be more toward virtual learning in the sense of augmented reality vs fully self contained worlds. Both of the solutions I showed above would likely come with a hefty price tag just to implement in a single classroom. Both systems also use a front heavy headset. Just as students can get a headache from staring at a screen for too long, having a device on their heads for a long period of time isn't necessarily a good thing. When students are on computers, teachers can scan the room to see if the students are on task. With VR headsets, a student could potentially just close their eyes and sleep and the teacher may not know.

In the library, I would use something like VR to bring students into the worlds of the books they are reading. Simply reading the pages of a book is enough to spark some student's imaginations. For others, they need more assistance to set the scene. VR could take students to China, England, Germany, etc. With VR, they could watch a performance of a play as if they were standing on stage. 

Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2012). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson.