The impact of the individual in a group

So you're part of a group. Congratulations. Now what? What is your role? Do you want one? Maybe you're shy or not the type that works well with others. I was intrigued by the video in class showing students in group settings all working on their projects. The conventional wisdom was, everyone seemed to be contributing and perhaps the kid or kids that did not contribute as much, created or gave the presentation. It didn't really make sense to me that the person that contributes least delivers the findings for the rest of the group. But OK. I guess since it's the last of the tasks and the person who has "contributed the least" should do something. But it got me thinking about the individual in the group and the pros and cons of the group dynamic. How can we adequately assess the individuals contribution?

Using our small class setting as an example, when a group gets started, it's somewhat chaotic. People getting to know each other for the first time maybe. Then the discussion begins to build around the topic and ideas begin to unfurl. People adding idea on top of idea until the original idea started by one person, now morps into something different. Contribution can be as simple as one word spoken by a person, perhaps the person that contributed the "least". It also could have been that one word that changed the course of the entire project and led to success or failure, but the contribution was no less significant.

Clay Shirky demonstrates this well in his Ted speech about Institutions vs. Collaboration. He uses Flickr as an example to show how "mind tools" level the playing field and allow collaborative contribution to thrive. In his example, one person can contribute many photos to a subject and another can contribute one photo, but perhaps the one photo by the person who contributed "the least" is the photo you want.

He then goes on to eviscerate Steve Ballmer of Microsoft who is adamantly opposed to the idea of open source programming. How can thousands of people contributing to a program who do only one thing or add one patch be successful in achieving an end result. Poking fun a bit at Ballmer, he says,

(Ballmer talking)"we hired this programmer he came in and drank all our Cokes and played Foosball all day and all he contributed was one idea". To which Clay responds, "what if (the one idea) was a security patch for a buffer overflow exploit of which Windows has, if not some, several."

This illustrates for me as a teacher, the importance of having my students work in groups. In the past I have not worked in group settings. I didn't have any experience with group teaching or learning. Having experienced it in class now, I am more inclined in the future to have my students work this way. They can effectively learn more and experience more working together then by themselves, isolated on a problem.

The world is moving in the direction of collaboration. So it is increasingly important that students be exposed to these learning environments. My students in a lot of ways are ahead of their teachers. They are already using programs to collaborate whether it be for social, educational, personal, etc. reasons. So again I feel we are behind the times in the learning environment of the school. We are seeing, as Clay says,

"a massive readjustment and since we can see it in advance and know that it is coming, we might as well get good at it". (group learning and collaboration)

This is the essence of social value. The contribution of one person as small as it is, to perhaps never to be seen from again, can make all the difference in the world.

Time to start underfunding school tech departments?

Now that I've gotten your attention. Before I defend myself, let me share with you a little of my background.

All my life I've enjoyed experimenting with the parts of a computer. Tweak them, see how they operate, troubleshoot for improved performance, build systems, etc. Perhaps it's in my DNA from my father tweaking car engines when I was a kid in our family backyard in Brooklyn, NY in 1970's and 80's. We didn't have much money growing up and so it followed that we didn't have the nicest cars either. Duct tape on bumpers comes to mind.

In college I studied Music Engineering at NYU from 1988-1992. It was there I encountered again the importance of troubleshooting since the equipment (Analog tape machines, synths, microphones,...)was prone to break down often or vanish mysteriously. We still had recording projects to complete, however.

After graduating, I went to work in January of 1993 for a Real Estate Law firm, specializing in Tax protests. Virtually the polare opposite of an exciting environment compared to a music studio. It was an exciting time however, for the PC, the Internet and it's impact on the workplace. Our office decided to roll out an NT network and get a few PCs (Pentium Pro machines I think) for the partners. The office had in it's employment 1 IT person (IBM programmer), who was not as interested in the prospects of the new technologies impacts as I was. He was more interested in building up his avatar in World of Witchcraft. So I dove in, took some classes in tech support, network administration, and PC maintenance to create a niche for myself in the office. In the interest of disclosure, it was all paid for by the firm. (People believe you more when you say that in a blog)

Soon I found myself as a full fledged tech person. I had computer guts all over my cubicle. I had other office responsibilities, but the lure for me was in experimenting with all I had available to me. I would go in on weekends (not paid) to maintain PCs, play with utility software, etc. I would get calls at home from the managing partner asking me to help fix their daughters computer in their gorgeous Park Avenue apartment in the middle of the night ( I lived in Brooklyn). I was teaching people in the office how to use Excel and Microsoft Office. Much more exciting than my other responsibilities, but essentially I had created a new position and importance in the office and everyone would come to me. I even started a side business doing party and wedding invitations.

In the fall of 2007, after parting ways with the firm I found myself looking for a job. I was brilliantly unsuccessful at finding a position in the tech field. One day I got a call about a computer teacher position with an all girls high school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Having no teacher experience to speak of but nothing to lose, I took the interview and somehow, I got the job, but I had no idea what I was in for.

First, the school was a bit behind technologically in every way. Aside from kids throwing themselves on the floor, taking pictures of each other during class time and not listening to a word I said, I was not the disciplinarian type yet, I had a lot on my hands. This job also required you to be tech support for the whole school! The previous computer teacher was teaching typing and using the Internet for research, Microsoft Word skills. Not a very aggressive curriculum. Especially since the freshmen were typing faster than I could. The machines in the school were P3, 125K memory, 9GB hard drives running W2k OS that they purchased in the year 2000. I decided to start interviewing students to get an idea of what their computers at home were like and what their previous schooling experience with computers was. Ingratiate myself perhaps, but more important to me was to learn where they were coming from. The biggest complaint from students was that the computers are too slow. Slower than their computers at home and, it appeared to me because of this, they had little interest using the computers in the school(The teachers had even less interest). I also happened to notice in the lab, like most labs perhaps, computer parts were all over the place. There were enough RAM sticks for every computer in the school and then some. And that's when it hit me. Let's open these computers up and see what's going on inside. Let's learn how to make a computer faster without a whole lot of money, or just simply buying new ones. So we began to open the computers up and identify the essential parts of the PC. How to dust them out, clean them for efficiency. I began to envision a real lab experience involving the students in the process to learn how these systems work.

I must say the girls were fascinated. They had no idea what a computer looked like on the inside! And so the beginnings of the first unit of my curriculum were born and grew from there. I now have the girls designing their own systems using online resources.

So with the processing power of today's desktops, laptops, and the emergence of netbooks, have we finally reached the tipping point of hardware funding? With the advent of cloud computing and all we do with social networking and mindtools, do we really need so much more money and power or just a smarter maintenance plan. I know it is a lot more work, but think about the benefits.

I think the moral of this story is, as Martha Wiske says in Teaching for Understanding with Techonolgy, "Teachers are best able to guide inquiry around topics that they themselves find fascinating ". The other point that I like that she makes, and I stress to each of my classes, is the importance of making mistakes. As she says, "Making mistakes is a sign of willingness to risk learning and growing, not evidence of failure. Cultivating these kinds of beliefs in one's students is essential...".

I wouldn't trade any of the "mistakes" I've made to be anywhere than exactly where I am right now.

Technology in the classroom

Something struck me in class when we looked at the history of technology in the classroom and in the larger context of society. We heard that when a technology is introduced, there is no shortage of people touting the importance of it. I'm sure Thomas Edison would take back his comments of radio having a 100% improvement on learning in the classroom. A favorite quote of mine...Bill Gates once said 640k computing power should be all we really need!

With hindsight vanquishing the oratory of some of the smartest people involved with technology, we can now perhaps take with a grain of salt some of the future lofty expectations and boasting. Or, we can consider that all of those technologies (printing press, phone, radio, tv, film) were stepping stones contributing to the power of the technology we have today with the Internet, social media and modern computing, leading to the ultimate revolution in communication. All of the previous technologies were person to person or person to mass consumtion in their capability and this created a top-down point of view. Such is the perspectives in most of our modern day classrooms. As Dewey said in The Child and the Curriculum,

"The child is simply the immature being who is to be matured; he is the superficial being who is to be deepened; his is narrow experience which is to be widended. It is his to receive, to accept. His part is fullfilled when he is ductile and docile".

Replace child with citizen or masses and you have an adequate description of the way media has been communicated until now. So-called professionals delivering content to the massess and the massess consuming content. With the tools we have available today, the conversation is no longer top-down. We saw strong evidence of the power of the new communication paradigm playing an important role in electing the first black man to the Presidency of the US. As Clay Sharky said so eloquently in his Ted speach,

"it isn't when the shining new tools show up that their uses start permeating society, it's when everybody is able to take them for granted".

Perhaps when teachers are able to use the "Mindtools" as Jonassen calls them, to the utmost capability to inspire students we will interact with them in ways to interest them more. Maybe if we learn as teachers to communicate more with students in the language of the students of today or as Marc Pensky describes them as "digital natives", we can come together to foster better communication in the classroom and spur more interest in learning.

With the playing field being leveled as like no other time in history and because of the nature of the unique technologies today, we have an opportunity to change the way we communicate and engage our students. If the media landscape can change as quickly as it is, we must as educators, take advantage and change our own landscapes. As Dewey said,

"If the subject-matter of the lessons be such as to have an appropriate place within the expanding consciousness of the child, if it grows out of his own past doings, thinking's, and sufferings, and grows into application in further achievements and receptivities, then no device or trick of method has to be resorted to in order to enlist "interest."

Clay Sharky summizes the global phenomenon occurring with the advent of our new way of communicating best when he concluded,

"the media landscape that we knew, as familiar as it was, as easy conceptually as it was to deal with the idea that professionals broadcast messages to amateurs, is increasingly slipping away. In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap; in a world of media where the former audience are now increasingly full participants; in that world media, the world is less and less about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals...The question we all face now is how can we make best use of the medium, even though it means changing the way we've always done".

I do not think he's boasting.

Group learning with Technology.

I've been watching perhaps too many TED videos lately. However, this one in particular got me thinking about the importance of group learning. http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

There might not be much in there that you don't already know or haven't thought about. It got me to thinking how quickly the world is changing and how little has actually changed about teaching. Not only subjects, but our entire approach. As the world becomes less "top-down", how can our classrooms remain that way without further losing students interest?

Jonassen spoke in "Meaningful Learning With Technology" on page 28, about the concept Marc Prensky describes as "digital natives". Students are born in the technology now and use it in very different ways from many teachers or "digital immigrants". The divide is growing between student and teacher and unless we begin to incorporate technology more and in ways that maximize the meaning, we will only further add to the reason why technologies in the classroom don't improve learning. It seems to me increasingly more important to bridge the divide in the classroom and involve the students in ways they are more comfortable learning in.

If your up for it this video compliments the arguement also.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Group Learning

So i'm thinking about groups, colaborative thinking and working with students and teachers in these settings. How do I make the most use of the power of these networks? How do I assess? As a computer teacher, it's important for me to ensure that each student is getting fair attention, but not all students are alike. I have to admit, I have not done much with my students in the way of them working in groups. I like it in theory and hope to integrate it soon. It does present it's challenges. To me it seems like more work and an opportunity for good students to succeed and goof offs to goof off.