SPEECH AND Media Education, October 2012
Speaker:
·
Heli Ruokamo, visiting scholar at Stanford, from
University of Lapland, where she directs the Media Centre for Pedagogy: http://heliruokamo.
Discussants:
·
Nancy Frishberg, MSB Associates
·
Janis Hom, Hom Marketing Services
·
Alan Louie, Imagine K12
·
Gene McDaniel, Hewlett-Packard
·
Patti Price, PPRICE Speech and Language Technology
·
Ben Reaves, Oracle
·
Stan Rosenschein, Galaxy Learn
·
Fuliang Weng, Bosch
NOTES:
Background on Heli Ruokamo
Dr. Heli Ruokamo is Director
of the Centre for Media Pedagogy at the University Lapland and a visiting
scholar at the H-Star Institute at Stanford University. Her interests include various aspects of new
media and its use and utility in pedagogy.
Dr. Ruokamo serves on a
variety of committees and boards throughout the world, including the Planning
Committee for the Boundary-Crossing Conference on Co-Design in Innovation 2013,
Contact person of the Cicero Learning Network International Advisory Board, Member
of the Educational Advisory Board of the eUCLID games Inc., Member of the
expert group of the strategic leading area of service design, University of
Lapland, Member of the board of the multidisciplinary CICERO Learning research
network, University of Helsinki, Member of the impact on a traffic
communication group, Member of the editorial board of the International Journal
of Cyber Ethics of Education, Member of the expert group of the Active project,
HAMK University of Applied Sciences.
The challenge of using new media in education is getting teachers comfortable with the technology and using it effectively in service to pedagogical goals.
It is desirable to use technology where it can add value. Assessing the added value is challenging. Variables include: devices, location of learning, socio-cultural issues, ages of participants, number of participants, subject matter, degree of collaboration and interactivity, etc. The strategy in the Centre for Media Pedagogy has been to design the learning model, implement it, collect relevant data, and iterate.
There was a very lively discussion, including the topics of:
· How to assess understanding. Heli feels that multiple choice questions miss much of understanding and may encourage guessing. Others prefer more quantitative approaches than analyzing written or spoken responses manually, or asking for self reports. One component to assessing understanding is observing the skill of the learner in generalizing what has been learned to a new context. However, Finland educational institutions do not teach toward any testing goals and do not use the multiple-choice style tests, and yet consistently do better than the U.S. on the international exams in science and math. On the other hand, Finland does not face nearly as much socio-economic, linguistic or cultural diversity as does the U.S. And if all learning is through collaboration, then where does pedagogy come in? Heli feels that it comes from the reflections of the student and on informal study of their work and progress. Can this scale to the recent online enrollments of 50-100,000 students in a class?
· Culture and Innovation. In one recent study, reported on NPR, it was argued that Japanese students learn that you learn by struggling, whereas American students tend to think that struggling is a sign of weakness or lack of intelligence and in the study cited, the American children give up much more quickly than do the Japanese students. Others fear that the Japanese educational system makes it harder to be creative. There definitely is value (and disadvantages) of both approaches. Silicon Valley is famous for its innovation. What is in the culture that encourages it. Perhaps the lack of enforceable non-compete clauses or the willingness to take stock options rather than a salary, or perhaps the diversity of cultures.
· Culture and Learning. Schools are not the only participants in education. Parents need to be involved, and students need to collaborate at a young age. After-school activities also can reinforce learning and learning how to learn. An unfortunate outcome of Finland's focus on small classes for the young, has been a recent move to very large lecture halls at the university level. This puts Professors of Education in a bind: how can they teach best practices in teaching when they are not permitted to use them themselves?
· Technology and Education. Can we use technology, impoverished as it is relative to world needs, to provide at least some of what we do not have enough people to provide to students? In particular, can technology provide compelling, engaging, collaborative learning environments? Even a pencil was technology once. Great teachers know how to use everything available in service to their goals. How can we personalize learning to individuals, even when a large and diverse group is learning the 'same' subject matter?