My Ed Heroes #3 – Bernie Dodge

If you’ve heard of Bernie Dodge, you probably know him as  ”the Webquest guy” and with good reason.   Bernie Dodge is a professor of Educational Technology at San Diego State University, and he is the father of the Webquest.  The webquest (often misunderstood, unfortunately) is a model for learning experiences using the internet that are centered around meaningful and engaging tasks.    Though he is thoroughly a techno-geek (and I mean that in the best possible way), what seems to drive his continued work is exploring ways to integrate new technology in the classroom in ways that coax higher level thinking out of the learner and that cultivate the innate desire humans have  to investigate and understand our world.

Although “the Webquest guy” has a much nicer ring to it, I think a better moniker for Bernie is the “the Task guy.” The latter is more expressive of the expanse of work that he has undertaken.  Unfortunately, the word ’task’ tends to have negative connotations, especially when you take a look at variations on the word such as ” this is so tasking” or “she is such a taskmaster” or “staying on task.”  But these negative connotations tend to come from situations where the task is menial and/or boring such as when you are asked to fill out a worksheet by searching a chapter in a book.  In spite of these negative connotations, I think The Task guy is apt because what ultimately defines the quality of learning, whether it uses technology or not, is the task that the student is asked to perform.  And Bernie’s idea of a task is something that is inspired, challenging, and inherently engaging.  It is because his work is about elevating the task that he is, in my mind, The Task Guy.

I’ve been lucky enough to have Bernie as a mentor in several venues.  I’ve heard him speak at conferences but I’ve also taken classes from him at San Diego State.  I’d like to share what I’ve learned from him regarding the notion of ‘task.’

Lessons from Bernie:

Lesson #1:  The Importance of Webquest Tasks:

In a webquest, the task is of utmost importance.  Something I know is particularly vexing to Bernie is when people misunderstand what a webquest is.  The misunderstanding grows out of the conflation of  two ideas:  an internet scavenger hunt that is a collection of websites for a student to poke around in and a webquest that is a roadmap for inquiry centered around a robust task.  Both the internet scavenger hunt and a true webquest ask students to examine websites, but a webquest asks students to use the information and ideas found at these websites to achieve something.  In a webquest, the task determines what it is a student will be doing as they examine sites around the web.  And the task must be authentic, engaging, and require higher order thought.  So if you don’t have a high quality task, you don’t have a webquest.

The success of the webquest task can be gauged by how interested the students are in undertaking the task and how challenging it is (i.e. how much will it require intellectual and creative effort to achieve).  It is because a webquest is about high quality tasks that harness the power of the internet to inform, collaborate, and share that the webquest is a model of instruction that has staying power.

Lesson #2:  The Quality of the Task Depends on the Effect it has on the Cogs of a Student’s Brain

In a presentation Bernie did titled Kids as Deciders, Bernie provides a nice graphic and explanation that illustrated, in simplified terms, the learning process.  Okay, the graphic is a bit Tron-ish, but the idea is great.   Here’s a paraphrase:

You could simplify teaching and learning with a graphic like the one to the left.  The arrow that is stabbing the learner in the eye represents an input.  Inputs (like books, lectures, websites, simulations, movies, etc.) are things that students experience in order to begin to learn about and investigate a strand of learning.  The arrow exiting the students mouth (hopefully not regurgitation but something more meaningful) is the output.  The output is what teachers ask students to produce in order to demonstrate what they have learned.  It could be an exam, a movie, an advertising campaign, a presentation, a concept map, etc.

Ultimately what matters most in teaching and learning is the unseen and invisible  growth, i.e. the flexing of mental muscle, inside the brain of the student.  This is represented in the diagram by the cogs in the head.  How did the gears churn and turn in the student’s mind to process the inputs in order to produce the output?  The churning of the cogs is the learning itself.

So what does this have to do with tasks?  Well, generally the teacher at least in some way determines what output a student will use to demonstrate their learning.  It is the task that the teacher lays before the student that determines how the cogs of the brain will process the information and what the student will produce.

First let’s look at an example from a “webquest.”  I put ‘webquest’ in quotes in the previous sentence because the task in this example would barely qualify it as a webquest, if it does at all.  (See below) The task is simply a scavenger hunt for information that will be regurgitated in a PowerPoint and a brochure.  There is no repurposing of the information.  All students have to do  in order to achieve the described task is find the information and perhaps paraphrase it in a PowerPoint and brochure form.  Essentially they will be taking notes on the topic with a PowerPoint and brochure.  This is using the information at a very low level.  The cogs of the brain simply have to locate the information and summarize/paraphrase it.

Poor Webquest Task

Now let’s modify that task.  Let’s say that students will imagine that they are applying for grant money from the Department of the Interior.  The grant money must be used for disaster preparedness for their hometown.  In their presentation they have to define the dangers related to the type of disaster and generate a plan for improving the city’s readiness for that disaster.  This task would require significantly more flexing of mental muscle.  Presumably they can’t just go to Google and find a disaster preparedness plan for their home town.  They have to CREATE it – the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy – by finding out what happens when that natural disaster strikes, how people protect themselves from it, and what readiness plan may already be in place and how it can be improved in order to make their hometown ready.  They are going to need to piece a lot of information together for a particular purpose.  Furthermore, the presentation they create will need to be persuasive in order to make an adequate case for the grant money.  When they are done, the students have created something of value that probably taught them quite a bit about the natural disaster they focused on.

The lesson here is that a good way to evaluate the quality of a task is to think about what would have to go on inside of a student’s mind in order for it to be achieved.  If the mind doesn’t have to re-purpose, evaluate, or create something with the information, it is likely a poorly designed task.

Lessons #3:  Whenever Possible the Task Should Tap Into Wonder and Natural Curiosity

One of Bernie’s latest endeavors is called WonderPoints.   The idea is to try to resurrect that innate intellectual curiosity that we all had as children.  To refresh your memory of what that was like here are a few questions my four-year-old son asked just in the last few weeks:

• “Where does the gas go?”  (in reference to why we were always filling our car with gas)
• “How did I learn words?  Did you teach me?” (since his little sister is just learning to speak)
• “Why is the water windy?”  (in reference to why we felt a breeze on our hike when we got closer to the Chattahoochee River)
• “Why is it called Chattahoochee?” (interesting answer to this one – I won’t tell, but the picture below provides a clue)

As we get older we take a lot more for granted.  The idea of WonderPoints is to get students wondering about their environment by snapping pictures using mobile devices and documenting what wonder the environment inspired in a map.  In order to encourage the wondering, the student is asked to take a fresh look at the environment as if they were a child or alien seeing it for the first time.

Why do I think wondering is important especially with regard to tasks.  Well, I’ll give a story from my past as an answer to that:

I loved high school biology.  It was one of my favorite classes.  Not only was it challenging, but the teacher created experiences that were inquiry-based; where the task was high level and engaging.  I learned a lot about Biology, and the class inspired me to take Biology as my major in college.

BUT…

Biology seemed to be an interesting but lifeless subject.  Somehow I got the impression that biologists had it all figured out.  I loved learning about Pasteur and genetics and ecosystem dynamics, but these topics weren’t taught as if there were gaps in the scientific understanding.  The information was taught as complete not as if there were interesting questions left unanswered in the field.  To get down to it, the class did not inspire me to WONDER about biology or feel that I could be a part of answering biological questions.

My guess is that I’m not the only person in the world who has experienced this.  A class might be taught well and include well designed and engaging tasks but still not make a student feel that they can participate in the generation of new knowledge in the field – i.e. that their questions and investigation might uncover new truths.

The moral of this story – creating tasks that stimulate students to wonder and ask questions inspires students to investigate their own questions and create new knowledge.  This is often a missing element of coursework.

Why Educators Should Worry More About Tasks

All of the lessons that Bernie taught me about tasks may seem patently clear you.  But my observations of education indicate that although teachers may understand the need for meaningful tasks, it is the transfer of that knowledge to implementation that tends to breakdown – especially when considering the integration of technology.  Prepare  yourself, I’m climbing up on my soapbox:

The reason education has failed to inspire kids is not a lack of engaging technological tools. These are a passing thrill. How excited are people about the original iPad now that the iPad2 is released? If we are simply enticing students to learn by employing the latest technology, it is a cheap thrill.  To paraphrase Gary Stager (who happens to be My Ed Hero #4 and coming up in my next post) technology just seems to amplify the quality of teaching.  It makes bad teachers worse and good teachers better.  That’s because it is the teaching, and more importantly the task students are asked to do during their time with a teacher that defines the quality of learning.  A meaningful and thoroughly engaging lesson can use nothing more than the minds of the student and the skill of the teacher. You can do a really bad lesson in Google Earth and do an incredible one with traditional paper maps or brain power alone. The task is what matters.

If you think about it, what educational/pedagogical value is inherent to new technologies?  Well, I think that ultimately it boils down to a few things that really make them  have value in the classroom:

• Access – 24/7, anywhere, immediate access
• connecting students with people outside of the bounds of their classroom and promoting collaboration
• connecting students with information and elements of the world not available prior to the new technologies
• allowing for creations that have high production value

For example, What is the educational value of a Prezi?

Prezi will not have enduring importance to education.  Neither will VoiceThreads or iMovie or Flickr.  Google docs is just a fancy word processing program that makes documents more accessible and allows for collaboration.  Most likely these tools will soon be replaced and improved upon.  But quality tasks are what we need our teachers to be able to construct, and this will be of never ending importance to the field.  Students will always need to be able to plan, create, evaluate, persuade, propose, design, etc.  Unfortunately too many teachers get things backward.  We spend too much time raving about the power of a tool and not enough time raving about the power of tasks.

And one more thing, just because I feel this cannot be stated enough.  The reorganization of Bloom’s Taxonomy has caused some problems in the education field because the term ‘Create’ is used too generously.  Creating is now at the top of the taxonomy.  However, some educators believe that if a student “creates a movie” or “creates a PowerPoint” that they have asked their students to think at a higher level, but this is not the case.  Neither of these implies that the student created anything with the information. If you are wanting to design an objective that asks students to create, then take the tool out of the equation.  Are they creating a persuasive presentation?  Are they creating a new solution to a problem?  Are they creating a plan?  If you can take the tool out of the equation and the word ‘create’ still makes sense as part of the objective, then it is deserving of this highest rung of Bloom’s.  But if you are having students “create a movie about the types of volcanoes”  taking movie out of the objective makes it nonsensical to say the students are creating anything.  They are Not creating anything with the information about volcanoes that they research.

I thank Bernie for helping me to focus on what the learner is doing (and in particular what they are doing with the target content of the lesson) because, to me, it is the ultimate test of the quality of instruction.

TPACK & Learning by Design, my thoughts

In my last post I gushed about a framework for teacher knowledge that I believe is quite powerful, TPACK.  When I first learned of TPACK, I felt like a light went on.  Since I work in an edtech dept. for a school district, I quickly shared the framework with my colleagues.  Ever since, when I have planned professional development I have considered the framework the guiding principle.

Along with the TPACK framework, Mishra and Koehler proposed a strategy for developing TPACK called Learning by Design.  Here’s how I understand the strategy:  In order for teachers to develop TPACK, they should learn about technology in the context of solving a pedagogical problem.  For example, a small group of teachers might be asked to develop a learning experience for students to teach about the evidence for global warming.  In the process of designing this instruction, the teachers would consider what pedagogical strategies might help students to understand this evidence and what technology tools might help make this possible, easier, etc.

I think in general this strategy makes sense.  We want teachers to be instructional designers and consider technology use not because it would be “so cool” but because it is a natural fit.  If that’s what we want as an endpoint, why not start there?  … But I have reservations.  My thoughts on this strategy are shaped by my experiences as a student at SDSU and as a professional developer in a school district.

In my COMET masters classes at SDSU, learning by design is precisely the approach our professors are using to teach us about how technology can be used for instruction.  We are given a problem.  For example, create an educational video on the topic of your choosing.  The tool we use is completely open.  The video can be filmed, animated…be created in Flash, iMovie, Final Cut, Adobe Premier, etc.  If we don’t know the technology tool that will help us realize our vision, we learn it.  I think learning by design works in this situation very well.  But the reason it has worked in the SDSU classes is because the students are already at least fairly tech savvy, are motivated learners, and chose to participate in the program voluntarily.  We are ready and willing!

As a professional developer who develops pd for teachers who range from technology pros to complete newbies, I haven’t been convinced that learning by design would work as well in our district.  Here’s why:  I’ve worked for the past three years with a grant called ESETT.  ESETT’s goal is to help middle school science teacher integrate technology into their curriculum.  What we have found throughout the implementation of this grant (that has a heavy emphasis on professional development) is that in the first year of implementation, the teachers focus on learning the tools and dabble with finding ways to use it in the classroom.  In the second year, the teachers are at the point where they are using technology more frequently with students and feel more competent  In the third year, teachers can easily make choices about technology and explain why the tool is helpful in a particular situation.  Hence, it isn’t until the third year that most teachers develop robust TPACK.  It takes time.  It is only after teachers know what tools are available, have a rough idea of what the tools can do, and begin to feel comfortable with using technology in a supportive environment that teachers have developed TPACK.

In fact, when we begin to work with new teachers, we tend to tell them not to worry about the technology.  We encourage them to let us, as resource teachers, be the technology experts in the beginning.  Their job is to decide about the content and pedagogy and we help them find a good technology fit.  Once we help them plan, then we support them (if they want us too) by being in the classroom when they first use the new technology.  Now I don’t think this amount of support is always possible, but I do think that although the ultimate in professional development would be to develop grade-level/content area Professional Learning Communities that work together to design instruction while considering technology, pedagogy, and content, I think that getting to that point will generally require a bit of scaffolding.

Another strategy we have tried with our newest group of teachers in order to try to accelerate the development of TPACK is to have their first professional development experience be about seeing the technology work from the student perspective.  We created a Moodle course with a number of learning tasks (focused on our outcomes for the PD – i.e. developing an idea about how a classroom would be different with technology).  Each learning task had the teachers using some of the tools that they would have available to them once they are planning instruction.  For example, we showed them the basics of Inspiration so that they could brainstorm how the classroom would be different with technology and had them upload their work to Moodle as a student would.  Also, we had them synthesize their thinking in a ComicLife at the end of the day.  This way teachers learned using the tools that they would expect others to learn from.  This strategy helped them see how all of the tools can fit together in daily instruction, and there were many discussions toward the end of the day where teachers saw some natural fits with their curriculum for some of the tools and we began to help them plan those learning activities.

To sum up, I think generally there will need to be some kind of scaffolding before teachers will be comfortable learning using the Learning by Design approach.  Anyway, this is extraordinarily long for a post, so I had better stop writing, but thank you if you’ve been patient and read this far!