ID Meets IT Part 9: MOST Learning Environments

On reading Bransford's article about Multimedia environments that Organize and Support Text (MOST), I found it discouraging to realize how little progress we've made in the past 20 years in adapting technology to support the natural reading process of our struggling learners. I've recently worked for several years in a Title I school with a disproportionate number of disadvantaged students, many of whom had reading problems described by Bransford et. al, and who are also subjected to the same decontextualized drills mentioned in the article. What has changed since Bransford's time, however, is that these drills are now packaged and sold as popular "standards-based" software programs (read: isolated practice of basic skills), and this form of remedial instruction is now delivered by computers instead of skilled professionals. The problem with this is best summarized by this excerpt:

Overall, at-risk students receive repetitive instruction on things they do not know—instruction that does not allow them to utilize the rich sources of everyday knowledge that they bring to the classroom (e.g., Palincsar & Klenk, 1991). Knapp and Thrnbull (1990) argued that typical instruction for at-risk students tends to:

• underestimate what disadvantaged students are capable of doing;
• postpone more challenging and interesting work for too long—in some cases, forever; and
• deprive students of a meaningful or motivating context for learning or using skills that are taught.

The solution to this deficit driven approach proposed by Bransford et al. is a little counterintuitive at first glance. Rather than focusing on traditional approaches using oral and written language, the MOST models makes use of "multimedia technologies that allow the interaction of print and oral language with video and audio media." The following passage, short yet powerful, pinpoints the shortcomings of traditional instruction in closing the language gap between at-risk students and their peers: 

Because they are less likely than their developmentally average or advanced peers to understand all the vocabulary used by their teachers and story authors, they are less likely to benefit from purely verbal descriptions of background information, which could help their subsequent comprehension.

The authors argue that the incorporation of multimedia elements not only facilitates the process of conceptual and language development, but the process of learning to read as well.  Unlike the previous models examined, the MOST model provide little in the way of prescriptive practices to be followed by teachers. However, based on a list of features provided by Bransford, it's apparent that the increasing ubiquity of educational technologies in classrooms may already be supporting the inclusion of MOST environments. My elementary school, for example, was fortunate to be provided with a SMART Board for each classroom and this tool alone has done an impressive job supporting MOST environments for the typical classroom teacher. I've know several teachers who have created slideshows with images and video clips to support both narrative and non-fiction texts. At the elementary level, myself and several other teachers have incorporated multimedia infused literature through the use of animated storybooks from sites like Tublebooks. My wife has also used sites like Starfall to embed phonemic awareness activities within the context of a story. Although, these examples are limited, I do believe they demonstrate how even within a traditional classroom setting, tools such as the SMART Board can facilitate the incorporation of multimedia elements to support instruction.

As appealing as the MOST environment is, I see several barriers to widespread and rapid adoption of this approach. The first rests on an assumption brought up by Bransford and one I've seen with a strong foothold among the teachers I've worked with over the years. The assumption is that skills development, including those required for reading, must follow a strict hierarchy from "the basics" to "higher-order thinking". When translated into curriculum, this means that teachers will work with students on basic skill mastery before progressing activities that require more complex thinking, i.e. authentic and likely more engaging activities. Unfortunately, struggling students may spend disproportionate lengths of time working on "the basics" and, as I tend to agree with Bransford, this emphasis on can create misconceptions about the goals of reading, and ultimately turn them off to it altogether is they see books as simply "something you look at and say the words." Another barrier I see to this approach, though I believe there is a misguided logic behind it, is that since reading is achievement is measured entirely through short passages silently read, the MOST model may be seen as technological crutch that students will not be able to rely on when it come time to take the big test. Finally, there is a problem I mentioned in a previous post, and one I feel applies here as well. Designing media rich lessons is beyond the reach of many teachers, and even for the tech savvy teachers it would still be a time consuming process. Perhaps because of the reasons mentioned above, prepacked software programs that focus on isolated skills have become so appealing.

However, I do believe their is hope. While print-based literacy skills and literature will, and should, still have place in contemporary society, much of our print-based environments are already migrating to multimedia ones via the web. Although they require a new set of skills, they are also capable of supporting traditional ones. Reading the news online is not only a potentially more dynamic experience, with embedded video and photo galleries to accompany articles, but is also becoming increasingly common. And the advent of mobile computing through smartphones and tablet devices such the iPad, has made available a countless array of educational apps and storybooks that extend the reading experience beyond static text, allowing not only the support of multimedia elements, but also the creation of products that allow readers and learners to extend the reading experience and connect with others.  Hopefully, with the increasing presence of multimedia environments and rise of mobile computing devices, I think that schools will begin to recognize that our educational standards need to reflect these new literacies and prepare our students, especially for those at risk, to learn from them and with them. Otherwise, I fear, the language gap discussed by Bransford will also be joined by a widening digital divide.


Bransford, J. D., Sharp, D. M., Vye, N. J., Goldman, S. R., Hasselbring, T. S., Goin, L., O'Banion, K., Livernois, J., Saul, E., & the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (1996). MOST Environments for accelerating literacy development. In S. Vosniadou, E. DeCorte, R. Glaser, & H. Mandl (Eds.), International perspectives on the design of technology-supported learning environments (pp. 223-255). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

ID Meets IT Part 8: STAR Leagcy

If Anchored Instruction (AI) and PSI were to meet at college during their student teaching year, fall in love and have a brief yet passionate engagement, wed shortly after at the Alumni Chapel on campus and later give birth to a bouncing baby girl, that child would be named STAR Legacy. Her father, AI, has passed down to her his love of expertise, tackling real-world problems, and spinning a good yarn. Her mother, on the other hand, shares her independence, her desire for structure, and a belief that action speaks louder than words.


Family metaphors aside, the STAR (Software Technology for Action and Reflection) Legacy model presents a middle ground between between two instructional models at opposite ends of the design continuum. As with Anchored Instruction, STAR shares the instructional philosophy that learning should be contextualized within "meaningful, if not authentic, tasks". Content is often presented by "experts" in the field through video or audio recordings, and within an evolving narrative that follows a set of individuals as the work their way through the "challenge" they encountered. As with the PSI, STAR follows a linear, though cyclical, format and learners are consciously aware of where exactly they are in the learning process.  The figure below shows the components of the STAR process.

As was intended with its creation, the STAR "shell" was designed to be a flexible format with room for adaption to meet the needs of the teachers and students within their local context and implementation can vary. For instance, STAR as laid out by Schwatz incorporates the use of collaborative learning and provides perspectives and resources for completing tasks primarily outside of the STAR shell similar to PBL. STAR as implemented through modules on Vanderbilt's Iris Center website, however, follows take a PSI model approach with students working through modules independently, and as in AI, resources for solving problems are embedded primarily within the module, at least from those that I sampled. Regardless of the implementation, STAR still has it's roots in problem-based learning with the unique contribution of a legacy component, the creation of projects or products by students to be left behind for the next generation of learners.

According to Schwartz, the purpose of this approach is to:

teach a deep understanding of disciplines-while simultaneously fostering the skills of problem solving, collaboration. and communication-through the use of problem-based learning followed by more open-ended project-based learning.

As mentioned in a previous post, "aside from from the inquiry and problem-solving skills gained by placing an emphasis on learning as a process, students of PBL have also demonstrated deeper understanding and retention of content, increased motivation and teamwork skills." I've also mentioned in a blog posting on AI the potential for increased motivation resulting from immersing students in a complex problem that allows them to creatively solve more open-ended problems, while also fostering critical skills that are given a lot of lip service in education, but take a back seat to knowledge and skills that are easily measured by standardized tests.

While I have little experience with the STAR model specifically, the components of the model align almost directly with Gagne's nine instructional events and these I have considerable experience with as an educator. In fact, most of the models in this series incorporate these events in some fashion and differ primarily in how they present the content (event 4), provide "learning guidance (event 5), and elicit performance (event 6). Although I have little experience with this approach, I have used a mathematics program that frequently makes use of problem-based learning. In fact, two years ago I served on the textbook adoption committee for math and was able to help sway the committee in adopting a program called NSF funded program called Investigations that frequently makes use of the approaches discussed in the past few posts. A number of units in this series are prolonged "investigations" that are anchored to a particular situation or problem. One unit in particular was an extended study of the differences in heights between 1st and 4th graders which the students found especially engaging.

I've already mentioned several drawbacks to these contextualized approaches in previous posts, so in this post I want explore the difficulties we encountered with our first year of implementation of Investigations. As with any new program, Investigations was received with skepticism by many, and even disdain by a few.  As dramatically different is the PSI model from Anchored Instruction or Problem-Based Learning, so was the difference between Investigations and our previous Houghton Mifflin math text. From a teacher standpoint, it was a giant shift in how instruction was delivered. The older series was a teacher-centered approach with each lesson throughout the entire text following the exact same format of sample problem, teacher modeling of correct method for solving the problem, guided practice and then individual practice. Teachers had grown comfortable and some even successful with this approach, so implementing an approach that focused on group work, student solutions and problem solving over computational fluency was a difficult change. If teachers had difficulty adapting, it's not surprising that students did as well. My 4th grade students that came to me had very little experience working cooperatively and learning from classmates, and previous years of "correct" solutions and standard algorithms led to a sort of intellectual dependency on the teacher making creative problem solving and independent thinking very difficult for students. While these difficulties are confined to very specific setting and situation, I would imagine that implementing a problem-based approach like STAR at any level would pose similar problems for teachers and students.

In previous posts I've discussed ways in which technology can enhance these older models and bring them into the digital fold.  Returning to the analogy from the beginning, if PSI and AI are the "digital immigrants" of instructional technology family, then the STAR model is a "digital native" having been conceived and brought up in a digital world.  As demonstrated in the STAR modules from Vanderbilt, this model has been adapted to utilize the multimedia potential of the online environment. Each model is rich with text, image, audio, and video content, is easily navigable with links, and includes a wealth of material that would be nearly unmanageable in a physical format. But STAR, at least as presented at the Iris Center, is clearly starting to show her age. STAR Legacy is static and isolated and represents the height of instructional technology circa 1999. What it needs to bring about the full conception of the model as presented by Schwartz is an infusion of social media and web 2.0 tools for creation, communication, and collaboration. While re-imagining STAR in light of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wordpress, Zynga and the like is beyond the scope of this post, its not difficult to envision STAR as part of a dynamic network of online learners working together to share perspectives, collaborate on solutions, and create legacies of their learning for next set of learners.


Schwartz, D., Lin, X., Brophy, S., & Bransford, J. D. (1999). Toward the development of flexibly adaptive instructional designs. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models (2nd ed., pp. 183-214). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

ID Meets IT Part 7: Anchored Instruction

Arising from a desire to situate learning within a context mirroring the actual world students inhabit, early educational thinkers and doers such as Dewey and Gragg made the case for anchored instruction as an alternative to the rote memorization and recall of isolated facts and principles typical of the 1940's classroom. Unlike the traditional educational approach of passive absorption by pupils followed by the parroting of expected behaviors, Anchored Instruction (AI) requires students to work in small groups to tackle problems that experts in any given area might encounter. 

Like Goal-Based Scenarios and Problem-Based Learning, AI consist of students working in groups to solve authentic, and often complex problems set within a narrative backdrop. AI also shares some characteristics of the apprenticeship model in that "experts" in a given field are called upon to serve as models and to guide learning. What sets AI apart from these other approaches, however, is that facts and information need to solve problems are carefully embedded within instruction so that independent research in unnecessary. Solutions to problems are also less open-ended and the "expert" guidance found in the apprenticeship model is simulated, though as realistically as possible.

As one might expect when straying from the traditional instructional path, the implementation of AI in a K-12 classroom setting poses some problems for the practitioner. As Goldman et al. point out, the contexts in which instruction is anchored may span weeks and even months. For the teacher in a typical classroom, spending weeks or even months on a given problem might indeed be a fruitful endeavor, but is unrealistic given the pacing guides and content coverage required of most teachers. While it might be possible for a very creative teacher to weave the content to be covered into meaningful whole, this would likely be a very time consuming and difficult process for a teacher who already spends what little time they have not working directly with students filling out paperwork or attending professional development or meeting in PLCs to help struggling students. Aside from curricular conundrums, supporting the diverse range of students needs, monitoring the progress of not only student groups but the individuals within them, and providing feedback and support in this dynamic context could overwhelm even the most experienced of teachers.

Despite these challenges, research has suggested that while the achievement of factual knowledge was shown to be on par with students in traditional classroom settings, conceptual understanding, transfer of knowledge and application of information may be better over both the short and long term. But aside from the potential achievement gains, I believe there is an important motivational and affective component that comes from immersing students in an authentic situation with exposure to solving real problems that take time and expertise. Sadly, there are very few "problems" that we don't expect student to be able to solve by the end of hour long lesson. I believe part of this stems from the very narrow focus in our schools on standards and objectives that are expected to be obtained by students by a very precise date. While there are many praiseworthy standards written into our every state's grade level curriculum, not every standard is easily measurable and therefor not subject to testing. I can recall several staff meetings in which we were given a breakdown on the percentage of the test that each standard represents and therefor which standards to devote time to. Unfortunately, important objectives such as these, behaviors often touted as much needed 21st century skills and that are vital to producing competent and curious life-long learners, are too difficult to assess on a multiple choice test and, sadly, are rarely emphasized as a result:

• 1.06 Read independently daily from self-selected materials (consistent with the student's independent reading level)
• 3.04 Make informed judgments about television and film/video productions.
• 3.06 Conduct research for assigned projects or self-selected projects (with assistance) from a variety of sources through the use of technological and informal tools (e.g., print and non-print texts, artifacts, people, libraries, databases, computer networks).
• 4.03 Make oral and written presentations using visual aids with an awareness
  of purpose and audience
• 4.04 Share self-selected texts from a variety of genres (e.g., poetry, letters,
  narratives, essays, presentations).

While I would love to boast that I have used AI to the extent outlined by Goldman, I'm afraid my science instruction (and other content areas for that matter) has fallen more in line with inquiry-based methods that lack the narrative backdrop and extended focus. While I try provide problems and learning experiences that provide the necessary scaffolds to allow children to arrive at a solution or learning goal through a route that makes sense to them, as Goldman points out, this only represents a small part of expert practice.


Fortunately, I do see technology playing a role in easing the process for educators interested in implementing anchored instruction. As video has played such a major role in the past of providing the AI stroyline and simulating interaction with experts in the field, the ubitquity of video sources courtesy of the Internet (both freely available form sites such as YouTube or behind paid wall like Discovery's United Streaming) provides teachers with easy access to resources to fit virtually any problem. In addition, the explosion of online collaboration tools make it even easier for students to address the objectives listed above. Although I feel that technology may easy the process, the added role of instructional designer that a teacher would have to take on places too great a burden on an already demanding job. I believe for educational approaches like these to really become a part of the teacher's repertoire, those responsible for the development and/or selection of curricular materials will have play a larger role.

Goldman, S.R., Petrosino, A.J., Sherwood, R.D., Garrison, S., Hickey, D., Bransford, J. D., & Pellegrino, J.W. (1996). Anchoring science instruction in multimedia learning environments. In S. Vosniadou, E. De Corte, R. Glaser, & H. Mandl (Eds.), International perspectives on the psychological foundations of technology-based learning environments (pp. 257-284). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Eribaum. 

Pichert, J. W., Snyder, G. M., Kinzer, C. K., & Boswell, E. J. (1994). Problem solving anchored instruction about sick days for adolescents with diabetes. Patient Education and Counseling, 23(2), 115-124. doi:10.1016/0738-3991(94)90049-3 

Voices Behind the Visions

The 2020 visions of our students clearly bring into focus the views our student have about technology and education. And I think with a little imagination we could even use their visions to create something akin to a photo mosaic of what the classroom of 2020 might look like. A classroom where where every student has a small portable computer that allows them to read text, link to media rich databases, collaborate with peers, engage in stimulating environments, and access learning at any time, place or pace. However, I think if we look beyond the visions, and listen rather to the voices of 2020, we will hear something even more significant. We will hear that our students are not really asking for technology gadgets and gizmos, they are asking for the tools, opportunities, support and change that our schools are failing to provide.

A New Tool

The visions of 2020 show us that children want devices that are small, portable, convenient, and easy to use: a single thin book-size computer, for example, that allows them to access all kinds of media formats and resources with a single device. One that can be used effortlessly to record and communicate ideas and be carried around for instant access. They are asking for a new tool that will replace the multitude of tools we currently provide such as textbooks, pencils, keyboards, PC’s, draft books, folders, crayons, paper and so on and so forth.

That is what they are showing us, but what are they really telling us? I think if we listen we will hear that they what they really desire is a tool that will remove the barriers to learning created by the multitude of tools they must currently master before they can get to the learning that matters. For instance, in order for our students to learn to efficiently communicate ideas and access information electronically, the must learn the laborious task of learning to type. Or if a student is interested in a subject and desires to learn more, they must first locate the proper book among hundreds of books, sift through its pages for the proper content, and hope that they find what they are looking for. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we should look to technology to replace important literacy skills, but we should being considering how the classrooms of 2020 can use technology can remove unnecessary learning obstacles and get the learning that matters.

Access to Opportunities

Our students also show us visions of technology that will allow every student access to the information they need, when they need it, and the ability to share this information with peers all over the world. They are showing us a school in which technology is not partitioned to a separate wing of the building, or allotted to students at given times of the day in heavily filtered doses of isolated access, but rather technology that is a accessible to anyone,
anytime and anyplace.

What our students are telling us about our schools is that they are failing to provide students with opportunities to utilize a powerful tool for learning. They are telling us that the opportunities we do provide are isolating and limited. They are telling us that they are not happy with their alloted times for restricted computer access. If we are truly listening to the voices of 2020, we would hear that we need to increase access to technology by providing our every student the opportunity to frequently utilize it in ways that will allow them to easily explore, connect, and share.

Just-in-Time Support

The visions of 2020 also show us technology that will be used to support our students in ways that will meet their specific needs at the time when it is most needed. These visions, though often rather fantastical, show us numerous ways that the classrooms of the future can help students on homework, link students with the necessary resources, and provide students with immediate access to resources that will satisfy their curiosity. In the classrooms that
students envision for the year 2020, the support student will need will be available at the click of a button.

Sadly, perhaps more so than any other section of the 2020 report, is that what these voices are telling us if we are only willing to listen, is that our schools are currently failing to provide students with the support they need. They are telling us that students are eager to for feedback and are willing to ask for the help they need, but for whatever reason, overcrowded classrooms or overburdened teachers perhaps, our schools are not providing our students with the one thing that requires no knowledge of technology whatsoever: support, guidance, and feedback. If technology is able to provide this someday, I fear we may all be out of a job.

Learn Different

Apple’s popular slogan, “Think Different” could aptly apply to how students see technology changing how they learn in the future. They see games used for learning, they see virtual field trips to distant lands and distant times, they see learning that requires no physical classrooms, teachers or even books and is tailored to their personal learning styles. They see learning in a completely different way than they learn in a typical school setting. They see
change.

Our students are telling us that our schools need to begin thinking differently if they are going to remain relevant to today’s digital student. They are telling us that this is how we live, this is how we learn and with some changes you can connect learning to our lives in a powerful way we understand. If our schools can learn to adapt, learn to listen and learn to think differently, we too will begin to see the potential for technology to reach today’s students who learn different.

The student visions of 2020 are showing us more than what our students think about the schools of the future. They are telling us what they currently think about the schools of the present. And their voices are loud and clear. They are saying our schools need to remove barriers, expand opportunities, provide support and make some changes. Let us hope that we will begin to listen long before the year 2020 so that the learning students envision today, they will experience in the near future.

ID Meets IT Part 7: Goal-Based Scenarios

Video Games!! That was the first thought that flashed through my head as I read about the Goal-Based Scenario (GBS) model for instruction. But not the arcade classics such as Pac-Man, Street Fighter II, or NBA Jam --though it could be argued that they too incorporate some elements of GBS-- but rather console and PC classics such as Sim City, The Legend of Zelda and Civilization. In fact, I think it would could be argued that game based learning and GBS frequently intersect. The appeal of GBS for kids is not only the idea that they have a goal or mission to complete but that, like any adult who hates to read instructions while putting together that cheap IKEA bookshelf, kids would rather learn what they need to along the way, and only what they need to in order to reach their goal.

I'm afraid I haven't be quite clear yet as to what GBS is. Goal-based scenario (GBS) is an instructional method designed to solve two age-old educational problems: 1) we teach students, students forget what we teach and 2) students aren't motivated to learn what we teach. With goal-based scenarios, students learn by doing as they practice target skills and use relevant content knowledge to help them achieve their goal. As part of a simulation, students are provided with coaching and just in time support to reinforce knowledge and skills gained along the way.  In a sense GBS is a Trojan Horse in which the knowledge and skills students need to learn as part of the curriculum are hidden inside a more attractive package that is designed to entice their interest and maintain their engagement. As one would expect, GBS consists of a Goal or mission designed to appeal to students, a cover story for framing that goal (not unlike many video games), a role students take on as part of the scenario, the scenario itself, resources and feedback in the form of consequences, coaching or stories.

Personally, I have very little experience with GBS as an instructional method either as a teacher or student (video games excluded, of course). I've seldom seen it used by teachers, with the exception of a 5th grade team teacher of mine who used it occasionally in Social Studies. I think part of the reason is not that we teachers do not find the approach appealing, but rather for a variety of reasons mentioned in previous post. GBS is seldom incorporated into mainstream curricular materials which means that the burden of design is placed on the teacher, and the burden of design is a heavy one for teachers already treading water just to keep up with the everyday demands of the profession. Another barrier to use of this model is lack of training in its use so that it is efficiently and effectively employed. I think there might be the fear from teachers that management of this approach would be overwhelming and that students may not master the isolated skills on which they will be tested. As appealing as this approach may be, I don't believe there are enough supports in place for teachers to feel comfortable using it beyond small scale implementations spanning a few lessons.

Technology seems to be suited to some models more than others,  playing a support role in some cases such as in problem-based learning or a dominant role such as in the Personalized System of Instruction, but in GBS I believe there is the potential for technology to play a leading role. I've already mentioned a couple simulations that adapt this approach to create incredibly engaging learning environments, and I've also used Zoo Tycoon in the past as a powerful tool for students to learn not only factual information about animal survival needs and adaptations, but also as a means to teach budgeting, multitasking, problem-solving skills. Zoo Tycoon is one of those rare games that matched well with the Standard Course of Study, however, as engaging and powerful these types of games are, they often do not align with the state curriculum and the games or software that . Aside from games and simulations, technology can also play a support role in helping students navigate non-game-based scenarios such as those mentioned by Schank. Whether it is looking up information on the fly to help make a decision or solve a problem, or whether it's role playing with students, coaches or experts at a distance through video conferencing tools, technology can play a role in supporting this approach provided the support is there for teachers and students to use the technology.

Schank, R. C., Berman, T. R., & Macpherson, K. A. (1999). Learning by doing. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models (2nd ed., pp. 161-182). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

ID Meets IT Part 6: The Cognitive Apprentiship

The apprenticeship is likely as old as civilization. A skilled practitioner in a given field takes on a starry-eyed youngster and learns him the tricks of the trade by showing him how its done and cudgeling him til he gets it right. At least was the impression I got from watching the master/pupil relationships on USA network's Kung Fu Theatre as a child. Perhaps a more apt example, however, is the relationship between Almanzo and his father in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy mentioned in a previous post. In that instance, young Almanzo gradually learned the skills of the farmer from his father by "observation, coaching, and successive approximation"  as Collins, Brown, & Newman (1999, p. 453) point out. These early apprenticeships, however, were intended to "transmit complex physical processes and skills" of a very particular field (p. 455). Aside from teachers in a trade or specific professional school, this teaching model poses a problem when the complex skills and processes aren't necessarily tied to a specific trade, or even a physical act like farming or kung fu, but rest more in the cognitive and metacognitive domain, or the realm of thinking and thinking about thinking.

The desire to translate the apprenticeship model from the world of physical trades to the classroom setting is certainly understandable. As Collins et al. point out, the apprenticeship is capable of teaching complex skills without resorting to lengthy practice of isolated subskills" (p. 456), something I'm sure both teachers and students would appreciate. Other cited benefits include increasing relevancy for students by anchoring instruction in authentic settings and supporting students in the achievement of complex and desired skills through careful scaffolding and gradual release. But translating the apprenticeship of old to the classroom requires a new kind of apprenticeship, the cognitive apprenticeship. Under this model:

Apprentices learn these methods through a combination of what Lave calls observation, coaching, and practice, or what we, from the teacher's point of view, call modeling, coaching, and fading. In this sequence of activities, the apprentice repeatedly observes the master executing (or modeling) the target process, which usually involves some different but interrelated subskills

Although the ideal one-to-one apprenticeship model is unlikely to be seen as the primary means of instruction in the modern classroom due to the substantial number of students in a given classroom, and supporting these students in such a way would be unrealistic, I think you'll find aspects of the apprenticeship and situated learning in the classroom of any decent teacher. The sort of coaching has been a part of the repertoire of reading teachers for decades as teachers model reading skills to a small group of students and coach students through the process of reading. The aspects of the apprenticeship  also played a large role in my writing instruction, both before and after my training on Write from the Beginning, which relies heavily on teaching modeling of the writing process and think alouds of complex processes. At the level of higher education, the apprenticeship model was a primary strategy in my teacher education program through a year-long internship with a master teacher. During this internship, observation, reflection, practice, coaching and gradual release from my cooperating teacher was the model used to assist me in developing the complex skills --yes, being a teacher is a complex profession despite the current trend in belittling our field-- required to effectively manage a productive classroom.

So what is technology's role in supporting the apprenticeship model and the benefits to be gain from it? First off, technology has the potential to connect students to true masters in a given field. The elementary teacher is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, making some aspects of the apprenticeship a difficult task. But through video conferencing tools such as Skype or websites such as Shout! students are able to connect with true experts in a given field. Access to online video also provide students now with a wealth of expert models demonstrating or discussing their professions such as this video of writing Mary Pope Osborne discussing the craft of writing for budding young authors and fans of Magic Tree House books (as many of my 4th graders were). One role I particularly see technology playing, especially as 1:1 classrooms begin to emerge, is the use of tutorial software programs for basic skill instruction, practice and assessment (perhaps using the PSI model), thereby freeing up the teacher to work with students in small groups on complex tasks and authentic activities. This would delegate, and in effect automate, basic instructional tasks to computers, and allow teachers to focus their energy on coaching small groups of students at similar skill levels and scaffolding instruction to help them move beyond the basics.

In summary, I think in every good classroom you will find aspects of the apprenticeship model in action, though there are limits given the large pupil-teacher ratio. Modeling and thin- alouds have become pretty standard practice at the elementary level and coaching to a certain extent, though typically more so with needier students as the time a teacher can spend with individual students is limited. Technology has a role in that it can connect students with experts in the field previously inaccessible, or at the very least provide us the opportunity to observe them as I did so often on a Sunday afternoon watching Kung Fu Theater.