Transcript Developing A Philosophy of Computers in Education

Roles of ICT in TAG Education
David Moursund
University of Oregon
Version 2/6/06
1
Getting Started
 Handouts
 Introductions: participants’
TAG interests & involvement
 Time Schedule
2
Very Brief Overview
 Highly interactive
 Presenter and participants as whole group
 Participants in small groups
 Very important overall goals
 Improve the quality of education being provided to
TAG students
 Improve the quality of education being provided to all
students
 Enjoy ourselves—learn and have fun.
3
Part 1
Four key ideas
 Many “real world” problems are interdisciplinary,
complex, challenging.
 Information and communication technology (ICT) is a
powerful, interdisciplinary aid to problem solving.
 TAG students learn faster and better than average; they can
become much better than average at solving complex,
interdisciplinary problems.
 TAG students can learn to become self-directed, selfresponsible, intrinsically motivated learners.
4
Comments about four key ideas
 A small number of key ideas such as those
listed can “drive” a TAG program.
 All students (not just TAG students) can
benefit from an educational program that
takes into consideration the underlying
concepts of the listed ideas.
5
Part 2: Foundations
 "Ability will never catch up with the demand for it."
(Confucius, 551 - 479 BC)
 “When you spoke of a nature gifted or not gifted in any
respect, did you mean to say that one man may acquire
a thing easily, another with difficulty; a little learning
will lead the one to discover a great deal; whereas the
other, after much study and application, no sooner
learns then he forgets…” (Plato, 427 - 347 BC)
 "An intellectual is someone whose mind watches
itself." (Albert Camus; French novelist, essayist and
playwright, who received the 1957 Nobel Prize for
literature.)
6
Quick participant response
survey question
Clearly, some students learn faster than others. What
best describes the upper 10% of your students in
terms of learning speed:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
They learn about 1 1/3 times as fast as average
They learn about 1 2/3 times as fast as average
They learn about twice as fast as average.
They learn about 2 1/3 times as fast as average
They learn about 2 2/3 or more times as fast as
average.
7
Rates of learning
 On average, students in the 75 to 80 IQ range
learn about half as fast as IQ 100 students.
 On average, students in the 125 and above IQ
range learn twice or more times as fast as IQ 100
students.
 This is a factor of four or more
between the higher IQ and
lower IQ groups.
8
Small group discussion
In small groups, share examples and ideas of
how you—as an educator—accommodate
the individual needs of the huge range of
rates of learning you encounter in your
teaching.
What roles, if any, does ICT play in your
accommodation efforts?
9
Quality of learning & upper
potentials
 Quality tends to have to do with depth of
understanding and ability to use learning to solve
complex and challenging problems and tasks.
 Upper potentials tend to do
with being able to graduate
from various levels of
schooling, up through a
doctorate or post doctorate level.
10
Whole group activity
 Find out what disciplines the participants
teach.
 Ask about the nature and extent to which
they teach problem solving in their
disciplines.
 How about roles of ICT in problem solving?
11
Problem solving includes
 Recognizing, posing, and “solving”
 Question situations
 Problem situations
 Task situations
 Decision-making situations
 Using higher-order, critical, creative, and wise
thinking to do all of the above.
 Using tools that aid and extend one’s physical and
mental capabilities.
12
Critical thinking
(Diane Halpern, 2002)
 analyze complex issues and make informed decisions;
 synthesize information in order to arrive at reasoned
conclusions;
 evaluate the logic, validity, and relevance of data;
 solve challenging problems, and;
 use knowledge and understanding in order to generate
and explore new questions.
13
Adaptive/assistive technology:
ICT as “auxiliary brain/mind”
 After a person learns to read and write,
reading and writing serve as a major
brain/mind aid.
 A word processor with spelling and
grammar checker, along with Internet and
Web connectivity, is a brain/mind aid.
 Problem-solving capabilities of ICT systems
serve as major brain/mind aids.
14
Whole group: Whose brain &
mind is helped most by ICT?
 Lower IQ students?
 Mid range IQ students?
 Higher IQ students?
15
Whose brain & mind is helped
most by ICT? (cont.)
Answer: Probably this is a dumb question. All
are helped. The nature and extent of the
help depends heavily on the situation and
the nature of the needs and interests of the
person.
16
G, Gf, and Gc
Nature and Nurture
 g is general intelligence, consisting of:
 Gf fluid intelligence (nature), the biological
component; increases into one’s early 20s, and
then begins decreasing.
 Gc crystallized intelligence (nurture),
developed through informal and formal
education and experience; increased into mid to
late 50s if one works at it hard enough.
 The aging brain …
17
Multiple Intelligences
The work of Howard Gardner and others provides
good evidence that we need to think about a
person having different intelligence levels in
different areas.
 Linguistic
 Logical/mathematical
 Spatial
 Musical
 Etc.
18
Question to ponder
Some people seem to be very much better
than others in the learning and use of ICT.
Should ICT be one of the Multiple
Intelligences on Howard Gardner’s list?
19
Differing rates of learning in
different areas of intelligence
I have a doctorate in math. I doubt if I could
have earned a bachelors degree in foreign
languages, and I am quite sure I could not
have achieved this level of
degree in the performance
areas of art or music.
20
Whole group activity
Think of one of your areas of greater natural
ability, and one of lesser natural ability.
Share some examples with the whole group
on:
Do you find it helpful (or not) to have this
knowledge about yourself?
How schools helped you deal with this when
you were a student.
How you have helped yourself deal with this.
21
Part 3
Gifted vs. Talented
This tends to be a nature vs. nurture situation:
Giftedness, ability, and potential tend to mean
the same thing.
Talent, attainment, and developed potential tend
to mean the same thing.
I often hear sports announcers use the word
athleticism. I think they mean a high level of
athletic giftedness, ability, and potential.
22
Definitions of TAG
Gifted and talented children are those identified by
professionally qualified persons who by virtue of
outstanding abilities are capable of high
performance. These are children who require
differentiated educational programs and/or services
beyond those normally provided by the regular school
program in order to realize their contribution to self and
society (Sidney Marland, US Commissioner of
Education, 1971).
23
Information used in TAG
identification
From ERIC Digest (Coleman, 2003)
 multiple types of information (e.g., indicators of student's cognitive
abilities, academic achievement, performance in a variety of settings,
interests, creativity, motivation; and learning
characteristics/behaviors);
 multiple sources of information (e.g., test scores, school grades, and
comments by classroom teachers, specialty area teachers, counselors,
parents, peers, and the students themselves); and
 multiple time periods to ensure that students are not missed by "one
shot" identification procedures that often take place at the end of
second or third grade.
24
Highly & profoundly gifted
Highly and profoundly gifted students are children whose
needs are so far beyond "typical" gifted that they require
extraordinary resources. When tested with a Weschler
Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), their scores range
from 145 to 159 for highly gifted and above 160 for
profoundly gifted. In those ranges, these children are as
different in intellectual abilities from gifted children
(usually 130 to 144) as gifted are from a typical regular
education population. IQ scores do not tell the whole
story; however, they are a useful indicator of individual
differences, particularly when used to inform
instruction (ERIC, Profoundly Gifted, n.d.)
25
Identification is a challenge
 Roles of teachers
 Roles of parents
 Roles of TAG specialists
 Roles of IQ tests
 Roles of the student in self-identification;
available of self-assessment instruments on
the Web.
26
Whole group sharing
 Share examples of the good and the not so
good processes of identification of TAG
students that you are familiar with.
 How well does the “system” in your school
or district seem to be working for
minorities?
27
Part 4
Expertise
"In short, learning is the process by which
novices become experts. " (John T. Bruer.
Schools for Thought, 1999, page 13, brain
scientist)
"An expert is a person who has made all the
mistakes that can be made in a very narrow
field." (Niels Bohr, 1885-1962, physicist)
28
TAG students and expertise
A student who learns faster and better than
average is able to “accumulate” or achieve
more islands or areas of expertise, at a
higher level, than an average student.
29
Expertise as a point on a scale
Discipline-Specific Expertise Scale
Novice
Current
World Class
30
“Be all you can be.”
 When applied to students in general, this
refers to the idea of developing levels of
talent consistent with one’s level of
giftedness, ability, and potential.
 In my opinion, our goal as educators is to
help students be all they can be.
 We are not nearly as successful with gifted
students as we could/should be.
31
Lower and higher-order
knowledge and skills
Food for thought:
 Computers are far better than humans at
memorization and quick recall.
 How much school time and student learning
time is “wasted” by over emphasis on lowerorder knowledge and skills?
32
Lower-order and higher-order
Expertise Scale Illustrating Lower-Order
and Higher-Order Knowledge and Skills
Lower-order
Novice
Higher-order
Current Level of Expertise of
Learner
World
Class
33
Islands of expertise
Small group activity
 Think of some quite specific (perhaps quite
small) area in which you have a high level
of expertise relative to your peers.
 What led you to developing this island of
expertise?
 How long did it take you to develop this
island of expertise.
34
Building a high level of
expertise
 To be much better than one’s peer
schoolmates in a narrow area (an island of
expertise) may take a modest period of
time.
 To achieve one’s potential in a broader area
such as musical performance, math, or
writing tends to take 10 to 15 years of very
hard work and the help of very good
teachers and coaches.
35
Whole group question
 How long does it take for a teacher to come
reasonably close to being all he or she can
be?
36
Part 5
Total Talent Portfolio (TTP)
 The TTP idea comes from Joseph Renzulli,
perhaps the leading TAG person in the US.
 It is applicable to all students.
 The basic idea is for students to learn about
themselves as learners, and learn to take
increased responsibility for their own
learning.
37
Whole school approach
“After forty years of intensive research on school
learning in the United States as well as abroad, my
conclusion is: What any person in the world can
learn, almost all persons can learn if provided
with appropriate prior and current conditions of
learning.” (Benjamin Bloom, Developing Talent in
Young People, 1985)
38
Renzulli’s Three Ring Model
 The three factors of his three-ring model are
above average:
 ability
 task commitment
 creativity.
 He supports multiple intelligence ideas and
approaches.
39
Renzulli’s Operation Houndstooth.
TAG is much more than IQ
Qu i c k T i m e ™ a n d a
T I F F (U n c o m p re s s e d ) d e c o m p re s s o r
a re n e e d e d to s e e th i s p i c t u re .
40
Components of a Total Talent
Portfolio
1.
2.
3.
4.
Special strengths and abilities.
Special weaknesses and challenges. (** Not
included in Renzulli’s model.)
Interest areas.
Style preferences:
a.
b.
c.
d.
Instructional style
Learning environment
Thinking style
Expressions and performance style
41
Strengths/abilities
Weaknesses/challenges
 Self assessment, and learning to self assess.
 Comparison with classmates, friends, etc.
 Comparison with other’s performance on
state and national tests, Q tests, and so on.
42
Small group discussions
 Share your insights into whether your
students know their strengths and
weaknesses.
 Share your insights into whether your
students understand the meaning of, uses of,
consequences of, etc. their strengths and
weaknesses.
43
Instructional style preferences
 Computer-assisted instruction.
 Demonstration.
 Drill and practice.
 Lab and/or other hands-on.
 Learning station (rotation to)
 Independent study.
 Individual Project-based Learning (PBL)
 Individual tutoring.
 Lecture.
 Small group discussion.
 Small group PBL.
 Student reports (presentations)
 Whole class discussion.
44
Small group discussion
What do you know about the instructional
style preferences of your students, and what
do you do with this knowledge?
What do your students know about their
instructional style preferences, and what do
they do with this knowledge?
45
Who does what?
 In creating a student’s TTP?
You (the teacher)
The student
Others
 In making use of a student’s TTP?
You (the teacher)
The student
Others
46
TTP within a discipline area
such as ICT
 Last spring my preservice elementary
education teachers tried out the TTP/ICT
idea in elementary schools where they were
doing field experience activities. It worked
well, but it was time consuming.
 ICT may be a useful, not so threatening area
in which to experiment with your students.
47
Renzulli’s Schoolwide
Enrichment Model
The heart of Joseph Renzulli’s Schoolwide
Enrichment Model is a school decision to
devote a half-day per week to project-based
learning (PBL). During that time, all
students in the school are engaged in PBL.
A specific project may involve students
from many different grade levels.
48
Whole group questions
 Do any of you make extensive use of PBL
in your teaching?
 Do any of you know of schools that have
implemented something akin to the
Renzulli, half-day a week, PBL model?
 Have any of you experimented with TTP?
49
Part 6
Project-based Learning (PBL)
"Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may
remember. Involve me, and I will understand."
(Confucius around 450 BC)
"You don't just learn knowledge; you have to
create it. Get in the driver's seat, don't just be a
passenger. You have to contribute to it or you
don't understand it." (Dr. Edwards Deming;
industrial quality control guru)
50
Why PBL?
1. PBL lies at the heart of the Schoolwide Enrichment
Model developed by Joseph Renzulli.
2. PBL creates a learning environment that can be
effectively used in a variety of TAG education plans.
3. ICT Assisted PBL adds a new dimension to traditional
PBL and helps to create a learning environment that
can benefit both TAG and non-TAG students.
51
PBL from student viewpoint
1.
Is learner centered and intrinsically motivating.
2.
Encourages collaboration and cooperative learning.
3.
Requires students to produce a product, presentation, or
performance.
4.
Allows students to make incremental and continual
improvement in their product, presentation, or performance.
5.
Is designed so that students are actively engaged in "doing"
things rather then in "learning about" something.
6.
Is challenging, focusing on higher-order knowledge and skills.
52
PBL from teacher viewpoint
a.
Has authentic content and purpose.
b.
Uses authentic assessment.
c.
Is teacher facilitated—but the teacher is much more a "guide on
the side" rather than a "sage on the stage."
d.
Has explicit educational goals.
e.
Is rooted in constructivism (a social learning theory) and gives
careful consideration to situated learning theory.
f.
Is designed so that the teacher will be a learner, learning from
and with the students.
53
Appendix 1 of TAG book
 This appendix contains more than 20 pages of
examples and discussion of ICT-Assisted PBL
activities chosen for their open endedness and
suitability for use with a broad range of students.
 Examples:
 Learning and Forgetting
 Me: A Course of Study
 Scenarios of the Future.
54
Part 7
Final topics and questions

Research and practice in TAG education can be
analyzed from an ICT point of view.
 Here are some general TAG considerations to
think about from an ICT point of view. These
come from the Carnegie Mellon Institute for
Talented Elementary and Secondary Students.
1.
2.
Tutoring other students—is not recommended.
Working ahead in the textbook, usually isolated an
the back of the room—is not recommended.
55
TAG considerations (cont.)
3.
4.
5.
6.
Work on independent study project. Recommended as
a supplement, but not a substitute to a compacted
regular curriculum.
Work in greater depth in regular curriculum.
Recommended—but, avoid a “busy work” approach.
Explore Enrichment Topics in the regular
classroom—is recommended.
Compact the curriculum—highly recommended.
56
TAG considerations (cont.)
Work in small groups with other TAG students.
Homogeneous & ability grouping are recommended.
8. Move up one or more grades in a particular subject area.
Good for students with strong gift in one area.
9. Participate in an “all TAG student” program. Good for
exceptionally, broadly gifted students.
10. (Moursund’s addition.) TAG students to learn to fully
integrate ICT into each content area they are
studying in school.
7.
57