Windows and Mirrors

"Ideally, the curriculum provides each student with both windows out onto the experiences of others and mirrors of her or his own reality and validity. But for most students, the present curriculum provides many windows and few mirrors" (AAUW, 2009, p. 216).  While the American Association of University Women is writing about girls' experiences of curriculum, I think this idea applies to many educational situations, including technology education. Programs that do not integrate Web 2.0 and social networking tools still provide valuable windows onto others' experiences and beliefs, but fail to provide compelling mirrors of students' 21st century real life experiences. Since Dewey and Montessori (Flinders & Thornton, 2009), educators have asserted the importance of connecting curriculum to students’ life experience in order to make learning relevant, engaging and long-lasting.   In her Reading Power program Adrienne Gear includes the ability to connect text to life experience as one of the key factors in comprehension. Simply using a tool that is part of their home life can give students a sense that a lesson is relevant.  As well as the tools themselves providing mirrors of student life, the opportunities to access a whole world of peers and teachers and to experience different realities (if only virtually) provides more windows on diversity than we have ever had access to before. 

So, what does this have to do with my inquiry project?  Well, as I reflect on my past week's exploration of screencasting and blogging, I discover that my prosumer journey has given me both windows and mirrors to technology learning. Jane Davidson and June Wright (1994 as cited in Burke, 2010) divide primary students' technology learning into four stages: 

1. Discovery: The child experiences a growing awareness that what appears on the screen is what the child has created or selected.
2. Involvement: The child becomes motivated to learn and master basic commands and sequences.
3. Self-Confidence: The child learns to complete plans and to predict outcomes.
4. Creativity:  The child invents his or her own solutions to problems, can design challenges for others and can even create original scenarios (p. 88).

My inquiry this week mirrored this progression, although my discovery was on a higher level. I knew that what would appear on the screen would be my creation, but I did need to fiddle around a bit and discover ways to make my creation appear on the screen as I had imagined it in my head. As William Kist (2010) states, "a crucial step in helping students negotiate the web is for the teachers first to become part of the world of Web 2.0 themselves" (p. 72).  By experiencing my own learning curve as I tried to create a screencast with Jing and to post it to my blog and my library home page, I found a window onto the engagement, hope, frustration, determination, pride (and sometimes frustration again) that students must feel as they work through learning to use a new tool.  I experienced the "I've had it.  That will have to do." feeling as I got my screencast finished but could only find a way to link it, not to embed it which gave me more empathy for students who stop just short of their best work.  They are frustrated and need a break.  Maybe they will return to the project as I did (I did discover how to embed my screencast the next morning but couldn't make it retroactive).  Maybe they will wait until the next project to go that step further (my next screencast will be embedded). Both options are a valid part of the learning journey.

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References

AAUW. (2009). How schools shortchange girls: three perspectives on curriculum. In D. Flinders, & S. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (3^rd ed.). (pp. 214-236). New York: Routledge.

Boardman, T. (2008, July). Reflections. [photo] Creative Commons Attibution. Retreived from http://www.flickr.com/photos/tboard/2759751304/

Burke, A. (2010). Ready to learn: using play to build literacy skills in young learners.  Markham, Ontario: Pembroke Publishers.

Flinders, D., & Thornton, S. (Eds.). (2009). The curriculum studies reader (3^rd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Kist, W. (2010). The socially networked classroom: teaching in the new media age. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.