The Silicon Classroom — Week 10
Moving Towards a Different Kind of Classroom
Business first: we are preparing for our Spring Break trip. Gloria and Monica have worked hard putting together a busy itinerary for us. Between now and March 26th, we need to put together our projects for our Third Street students. All of us are looking forward to seeing them again, and we spent a good deal of time planning out how we will present to/talk with the students on the 26th.
We opened today’s discussion with this question: “If you were asked to describe your identity on a single post-it note, what would you say?” Everyone provided a wide range of responses, though most of us included family, heritage, and socio-economic background as key descriptors of who we are. One of the core tenets of this class has been how students bring themselves — their histories, interests, community, and motivations — into the classroom with them, and when we thought about how this might affect students in a typical classroom setting, we agreed that identity deeply shapes the way people learn. It challenges us to be a little more open-minded about approaches to education and where technology fits in.
The highlight of today’s session was guest speaker Dr. Brigid Barron, a professor of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. The things we have discussed in the past ten weeks relate to much of her research, which includes collaboration in inquiry-based learning environments, learning through a project-based computer curriculum, and design and assessment of community technology centers. It was awesome to hear her insights on all of these topics.
According to Professor Barron, the problems traditionally associated with Edtech, such as accessing the necessary technology and devices, are closing. The main problem now facing classrooms and the technologies supporting them is giving students access to learning opportunities. The tech doesn't always help, and Barron and her team are looking at new ways to give students that access. Among many things, she told us about the Technology for Equity in Learning Opportunities (TELOS) initiative and the Digital Youth Network.
Barron highlighted the work of Dr. Nicole Pinkard, Associate Professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University, Chicago (and Stanford CS alum!). Professor Pinkard’s work focuses on generating a multi-layered ecosystem of mentors and student-driven projects to support students’ growth. In particular, Pinkard emphasizes helping students develop three things: creative skills from coding to graphic design, critical perspectives of media, and a desire to learn socially by teaching (and learning from) peers.
In today’s world of Edtech, especially technology geared towards teaching students about technologies and engineering, learning how to code isn't enough. To Barron, education (and STEM in particular) shouldn't simply push students to move into the tech space; instead we want to teach students to be able to think through the tech world, what they create, and how they learn.
Fundamentally, this may require us to look at alternative representations of learning, analyzing and moving away from old paradigms, and focusing on how we can use what students bring with them into their education. Most of all, we need to provide students chances to access this tech world if we want to teach them.
More information on Professor Barron and her team’s research can be found on their YouthLab wesbsite.
Wordcloud produced from all Silicon Classroom 2016 Medium articles using Tagul.
