Okay, so “Classrooms Go High-Tech to Engage Students” isn’t the most creative headline, but it was nice to see some coverage of educational technologies of interest to me in US News & World Reports recently.  One theme of the article is that students are going to use technology during class, so instructors might as well put that technology to good use.  Another theme is captured by this quote:

Professors are not so much people who stand and spout facts with students taking notes, said [Glenn Platt, professor of interactive media studies at Miami University]. The Internet has all of the information. And students aren’t going to come to class for a lecture if it’s on a podcast.  So that means many instructors are trying to make the classroom more interactive.

Each theme seems a bit of a downer: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and “Kids these days!” (shakes fist like the neighbor in the Dennis the Menace comics).  I’m exaggerating, of course, but I think it’s worth pointing out that many instructors who use technology in the classroom aren’t catering to students.  Many are excited to find ways to create more interactive, dynamic, engaging classrooms.  Students learn best when they are actively engaged in the learning process.  Some students can be so engaged during a classic college lecture, but many don’t learn best that way.  (It’s worth noting that many of those who do learn well that way go on to careers like, say, college professors, so relying on our personal learning experiences to determine our teaching practices can be a bit misleading.)

Here’s another kind of “Kids these days!” quote:

“Technology is such an inherent part of their lives,” [Gary Rudman, GTR Consulting,] said. “They have come to expect it every step of the way. When they come to college, they are expecting this technology to be incorporated into their learning.”

I’ll have to take Mr. Rudman at his word, since he’s doing research on this topic.  I would argue that at least some students don’t expect technology to be used in interactive ways in the classroom.  Some students are expecting to come to class, listen and take notes, make sense of their notes after class, then write some version of their notes on the test.  Having students actively engage with each other during class (via clicker questions, Twitter backchannel, and so on) can throw some students off.  Most of them, however, come around to like a more interactive classroom.

I should also mention something I’ve many times from those who have had a while to think about Mark Prensky’s “digital native” idea: Students are quite used to using technology in their daily lives, but are often not used to using technology to learn.  They’re also not used to thinking critically about how they use technology.  (And, yes, I’m providing my own version of “Kids these days!” here…)

A few other highlights from the US News article include a brief description of the in-class backchannel used by Scott McLeod, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Iowa State; a mention of Livescribe Inc.’s Pulse smartpen, one device I’d like to get to know better; a brief update on the state of e-textbooks; and one student’s tough time with blogging for her classes:

Chelsea Nuffer, 21, a performance and communications major at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., said blogging for four classes was overwhelming and she ran out of things to write about. “It works for students who might not speak up in class,” she said. “For me, I’m pretty vocal.”

When the communications majors start complaining about having too much blogging, then you know that student blogging has gone mainstream!

Jeff Young’s recent Chronicle article, “When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom,” has sparked a great deal of discussion in various online forums.  The article profiles the recent decision of José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, to remove computers from the classrooms in his school.  He has encouraged his faculty to move away from canned PowerPoint lectures and toward more low-tech, interactive methods of teaching.

While I’m all for more interactive teaching methods, I thought I might share a few thoughts in defense of PowerPoint and other slideware technologies, in part because I think they can be very effective instructional tools.  For example, here’s a piece of a recent presentation I gave:

To introduce some of the research from How People Learn on the differences between experts and novices, I first had my workshop participants watch a short clip from The Devil Wears Prada that illustrates many of those differences in the context of the fashion industry.  After watching the clip, we had a great discussion exploring those differences and other aspects of teaching and learning raised by the clip.  Then I shared a few PowerPoint slides that featured short sentences and striking images designed to illustrate the points I wanted to make about experts, in the style of Presentation Zen.

Following are a few thoughts about this kind of use of PowerPoint:

First, I’ll note that there seems to be small, but growing, group of people in non-academic settings who refer to themselves as “explainers.”  These include Paddy Hirsch, who explains financial terms on the Marketplace Whiteboard video podcast; Tom Harris, who runs the Explainist blog; and Lee and Sachi LeFever, who, as CommonCraft, produce amazingly clear short videos that explain technology “in plain English.”  I’ve been taken by how these and other individuals use words and visuals to explain complicated technical topics.

Second, I’ve also found myself frequently referencing Schwartz and Bransford’s “time for telling” idea. (Schwartz, D. L., & Bransford, J. D. (1998). A time for telling. Cognition & Instruction, 16(4), 475-522.)  This is the idea that if students are ready–cognitively and motivationally–to hear an explanation, then they’re much more likely to benefit from that explanation.  Often, for instance, in classroom settings, it’s better to lead with an example or case study that interests students and grounds a discussion in the concrete before explaining the relevant to theory to students. This is counter-intuitive to a lot of academics, who are usually comfortable starting with theory and then moving to examples.  A well-chosen example or case study, however, can help create a “time for telling” in which students want to hear an explanation and are prepared to understand it.

What do these two points have to do with PowerPoint?  I’ve talked with many instructors who feel very comfortable using PowerPoint and with others who feel some sense of pressure (from peers, from students, from administrators perhaps) to use it to make their lectures more engaging. For either kind of instructor, it can be useful to help them think about using PowerPoint in more constructivist  ways–using it as an explanatory tool once a “time for telling” has been created, as I did in the presentation above.  Clicker questions can often help generate “times for telling,” setting the stage for students to benefit from a well-designed PowerPoint explanation.

I’m in the faculty development business, so I’m often thinking about ways to meet faculty where they are and help them consider teaching choices they might not have considered before.  Given the prevalence of PowerPoint, it can offer a great starting point for discussions of pedagogy with faculty members.

Marty Williams recently asked in a comment here about resources for teachers in K12 settings interested in using clickers.  I am asked this question from time to time, and my usual response is that since I’ve focused my efforts at the college and university level, I’m not as familiar with K12 clicker use.  I suspect that much of good clicker question design and good clicker pedagogy at the college level translate well to high school settings, if not all K12 settings.  I would be glad to hear feedback from K12 teachers on the ideas in my book to see if I’m right about that.

One connection point between college settings and K12 settings is the education of pre-service teachers.  Clicker use in courses for undergraduate education majors have two potential benefits.  One is that clickers can enhance the learning experience for these students in both education courses and in subject courses–math, chemistry, literature, and so on.  (Here’s an example.)  Another is that as clicker use becomes more common in K12 settings, future teachers will benefit from knowing how to use clickers effectively.  I would be interested in hearing from those who prepare future teachers how they have used clickers in these ways.

Given the interest in resources for using clickers in K12 settings, I thought I would share the few resources with which I’m familiar, while encouraging readers to add to this list in the comments below.

Teacher Learning of Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment is an NSF-sponsored project headed by Ian Beatty and William Leonard of the University of North Carolina-Greensboro studies “how secondary science and mathematics teachers learn to use [clickers] to implement a specific pedagogical approach called Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment (TEFA).”  I interviewed Ian for my podcast last year, and in the interview he talked about some of the lessons he learned through the project regarding professional development around clickers.  He’s also co-authored a paper on the project:

Beatty, I. D. & Gerace, W. J. (2009). Technology-enhanced formative assessment: A research-based pedagogy for teaching science with classroom response technology. Journal of Science Education & Technology.

Another reference of potential use is this 2007 literature review of classroom response systems in elementary and secondary education:

Penuel, W. R., Boscardin, C. K., Masyn, K., & Crawford, V. M. (2007). Teaching with student response systems in elementary and secondary education settings: A survey study. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 55(4).

Also, in a comment here on this blog, Jeff Stowell pointed out that some classroom response system vendors make available clicker questions aligned with state standards.  He linked to question banks from Turning Technologies and eInstruction.

Now I turn it over to you.  What resources for using clickers in K12 settings have you found?  Please share in the comments.  I know that there are several K12 teachers who read this blog who would be interested in what you have to share.