ID Meets IT Part 12: Learning Objects and Repositories

My first reaction, or association rather, when watching the presentation on learning objects was the site Learn NC, an online collection of learning resources aimed at NC Educators. While perhaps not the best example of an online repository of learning objects, Learn NC is a fairly extensive collection of not only lessons and articles related to North Carolina teaching standards, but also contains a decent collections of what could be considered "learning objects", or rather digital resources that could be used to facilitate learning. In a sense, learning objects remind me of set of Legos in that they can be selected and used to for a variety of purposes based on the designs of the creator. Ideally, an instructional designer could locate a number of these learning Legos related to a given topic and create a meaningful lesson from them in much the same way my fourth graders could magically assemble an rebel X-wing from a seemingly disparate set of plastic blocks. However, as any moderately tech savvy teacher can tell you, and as mentioned by Wiley as a potential paradox with learning objects, is that finding a learning objects that fits your instructional context can be a challenge. On the one hand, if they are general enough to be reusable, their actual use may be quite limited; and if they are specific enough to be useful, they may not be applicable to your instructional context or, more likely, very difficult to locate.  However, if you are able to locate a suitable learning objects, this can save a great deal of time in having to create one yourself.

As an instructor I've used learning objects both online and off. My offline collection of "learning objects" consisted of rack full of plastic bins that contained a variety of content area manipulatives. There were math learning wrap-ups, flash cards, pattern blocks, Cuisenaire  rods,  fraction bars, dice, counters, chips, circuit boards, geoboards, game boards and quite a bit more.  On their own, their instructional value was limited (though the entertainment value for the imaginative was without bound), but combined with a well designed plan, their instructional potential was unlimited. I think that digital learning objects share these characteristics with their offline companions. Stand alone learning objects need a well designed plan to really make use of the instructional potential. I wish I could relay in the next couple of sentences exactly how this is done, but my own experiences utilizing digital learning objects is seems fairly basic compared to what's possible. On our classroom website, I incorporate a number of images, games, clips, etc. into online instructional units, and had a "toolbox" and discussion rooms that contained a set of links to learning objects centered on a given topic, but these objects were used minimally compared to our offline learning objects. This partly due to limited access, and greater experience and ready-made lessons with offline objects.

Fortunately, there are growing number of online resources that make it easier to incorporate digit learning objects into meaningful lessons. For those of you with SMART Boards, the SMART Exchange has become the go to source for everything SMART board. What used to be a chore is... well, honestly is still kind of a chore, but it has made finding resources to use in SMART Board enhanced lessons a little less painful.  Or, if you happen to be Canadian, the Virtual Muesum of Canade --and large scale museum sites in general are great repositories of LOs-- is an amazing collection of potential learning objects related to all things Canada, including, but not limited to, the great Tim Horton of hockey and donut fame. Hopefully, as search engines like Google and Bing begin to leverage our social graph, locating useful learning objects will allow us to rely less on known but lmited repositories like the SMART Exchange and museum websites, use broad search engines like Google to locate very specific and relevant resources to use in our teaching.

ID Meets IT Part 11: Cognitive Flexibility Theory

Cognitive Flexibility Theory seems like a natural fit for learning given how we casually pick up new concepts, knowledge and skills in our everyday environment. For example, my knowledge and gradual acquisition of cooking skills --my wife would probably insist on quotes around that last word-- came from various attempts at cooking, comparison of recipes and techniques over time, reflection on success and failures, and experiences with televisions, books and observation of others. Fortunately, I've had the luxury of learning over a long period of time, with little at stake other than an occasionally burned meal or some very runny cookies (true story). Unfortunately, teachers in the classroom have neither of these luxuries. The several inches thick curriculum guide partitions standards and objectives into months, weeks and even days, and the penalties for failure in teaching and learning of these standards and objectives is growing increasingly harsh. In L.A. you run the risk of having you name published online and being publicly shamed if your students do not meet these standards. In Florida, 50% of your teacher evaluation will be tied to test scores. And in Indiana, your pay may soon depend on it!. Hence, one problem that I see with this method from a classroom and educational institution standpoint is a problem of efficiency. 

It's no secret that our curriculum is a mile wide and and inch deep. From what I understand of CFT, students are asked to explore content in depth, to soak in it, and to get to know the waters. When a 4th grade teacher has roughly 30 broad math objectives to cover in roughly 40 weeks, minus several weeks for testing and test prep, every hour and everyday is required to be as productive as possible and exploration of a wide range of materials in multiple formats will seem like a luxury to most teachers. Each day must be accounted for and each lesson must directly linked to a given standard with an explicit objective that can be measured at the end. On a side note,  I'm reminded of an excellent This American Life Podcast on the closing of an experimental GM/Toyota plant collaboration that tried to buck the traditional assembly methods by focusing on the quality of individual cars over the productivity of the line as measured by the sheer number that passed through and made it to the lot. While production moved more slowly due to the empowerment of workers to stop line when problems were sighted, the vehicles were of much higher quality and resulted in few problems with the cars over the life of the vehicle. In some of the traditional plants, production was moving as such a breakneck speed that employees were repairing new vehicles exiting production on the plant's parking lot, and the number of repairs needed after production by dealers was appallingly high. I think this is a fitting analogy for our for the problem described above and I will allow you to make the connections.

I know I've constantly referred to the application of these models in math and science in previous posts, but I've had the fortunate opportunity to be exposed to excellent programs and training in the math a sciences and I think some of the leaps and bounds made in experiential and contextual-based learning due in large part to the advocacy of great organizations like NCTM and the NSTA. In science, I've used curricular materials from the BCAMSC with units such as Magnetism and Electricity that allow students to explore related concepts through a diversity of investigations, readings, and literature. Although these lessons differ from CFT in structure and the degree of cases involved, I've witnessed first hand the academic and motivational benefits of allowing students to explore a topic in depth, approach it from different angles, and tie together a multitude of experiences to make sense of a problem of phenomenon. I've seen students who enjoyed learning for its own sake, who felt empowered to pursue their own line of reasoning, and who were curious about the material to be learned.


While technology can do little to solve the time/testing dilemma, I do think the Internet has brought he possibility of incorporating CFT within greater reach for the digitally literate teacher. The sheer number of primary source material and instructional videos now accessible online, not to mention quality online educational databases, personal blogs, and powerful search engines, have made gathering and collecting material for CFT possible. The way that software like garage band, movie maker and photoshop brought professional media production within reach of the average person, the resources mentioned above brought the material and tools needed for creating content and resources rich lessons within reach of teachers. 

ID Meets IT Part 10: Case-Based Learning

As pointed out in the lecture, the case-based method appears to have a lot in common with several other contextual-based instructional methods presented in previous weeks. There is the presence of a narrative structure to present content, an emphasis on higher-order thinking skills, and a context anchored in real-world situations.  At the elementary level, case-based instruction as used in secondary and higher education poses a challenge for teachers due to the limited reading skills and the ability of students to follow lengthy narratives. If used on a very small scale, however, it is very useful approach to framing instructional problems. The realistic narrative format can allow student to connect new content and skills to existing knowledge and prior experiences and provide that necessary bridge between the known and unknown.

I’ve often made use of “cases” with my elementary students in the context of math and science instruction. The quotation marks, however, signify that these cases are really small scale versions of what would be considered a normal case. It usually consists of a short paragraph, perhaps two at the most, detailing a semi-realistic situation in which the problem at hand might occur. For example, in mathematics, we might be working on area and perimeter, and the lesson would begin with a short story about a boy and his grandpa interested in building a sandbox, but are limited by the amount of building material and sand that they have.  While a “case” like this doesn’t involve the complexity or amount of embedded content that a true case-study may entail, it does provide a realistic application for the content to be learned. 

I can easily envision MOST environments and case-based scenarios meshing well to provide elementary students with an opportunity to explore more in-depth case studies. While lengthy text-based case studies may be too difficult for students to attend to, providing video or media embedded cases could provide the necessary supports for students to explore them. Although these may take time too much time for a teacher to develop, there are countless video clips and longer videos through sites such as YouTube and United Streaming that are at the teachers disposal.