Dewey´s taxonomy in EduTech

A few weeks ago I was invited to be part of a group that has the mission to formalize a concept of digital media applied to education. Among the first tasks that we have ahead, we must establish objectives and purposes. All within a conceptual framework. Of course there are a significant number of such conceptual frameworks, the discussion lies in which of them are suitable for our reality. Maybe someone would think it would be interesting to find an author of recent times, say someone who has written about these issues within these last two decades.

However, taking as referents authors who can be considered classics and foundational, can be an interesting idea. After all, even when it comes to applying digital technologies to educational contexts, the center of the issue lies in education. Not in the application of technology as an entertainment or as some marketing issue.

So the proposal of a concept of digital media can go around considering a taxonomy based on the nature of the human being that learns and teaches. In the human being, not in technology. In the end, we can find different applications and digital artifacts that serve to amplify the human experience of learning and teaching. The four impulses that John Dewey held as foundational of the learning being, are the central column of several pedagogical approaches and certainly a plausible approach to defining the uses of technology in the classroom.

Discussions in the field of educational technology present a plethora of questions to be discussed. From the selection or compendium of a conceptual framework, going through establishing realistic and measurable objectives (SMART objectives, but this is a topic for another article) and even the selection of applications and platforms to implement all of the above. Given this wide panorama, the experts have discussions and their points of view seem disjoint and often divergent. To the point of unbridgeable divergence, which refers to a radically different conception of basic questions such as what does it mean to learn or teach?

In any case, assuming a deep conceptual framework as Dewey's pedagogical model can be, it does not guarantee that experts agree fully on their visions. Not even in what would be the object of study. This implies that each of these theories are proposals that must be analyzed, using the institutional prism, using the educational ideology and the institutional educational project as a central parameter in the definitions that must be followed.

From the study presented by Bertram C. Bruce and James A. Levin:

There are other valid frameworks one might adopt. Some choose to emphasize hardware differences; others software. Some might focus on the content or grade level of application. Many choose to focus on function. Our point is not to preempt all other views, but rather to suggest that there are many legitimate ways to conceive of educational technology. This observation, which some might say is obvious, often goes unrecognized. As a result, many authors argue points that presuppose one perspective, without an apparent realization of how much their case relies upon that presupposition.

From the document "Educational Technology: Media for Inquiry, Communication, Construction, and

Expression". By: Bertram C. Bruce and James A. Levin

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All is happening at the same time

If you believe that a classroom is a monotonous, one-tone work environment, then you are completely wrong, or you were never in a good and active class. When students are active in their learning and the teacher establishes with them the right work environment, everything seems more like the image at the beginning of this article. Classrooms are spaces with a heterogeneous audience and teachers are encouraged to maintain and cultivate that diversity. In that diversity there are some intersections, the experienced can spot different ways of thinking and feeling, probably divergent point of views around the same topic might emerge. All in all, that gamut of  ways to inhabit a classroom creates -or should create- a richer and fertile atmosphere to learn.

This could be in terms of people, ideas, preferences, styles, etc. In a classroom setting, diversity can present itself in a number of different ways: multicultural students, different learning styles, distinct personalities, etc. 

All these ways in which diversity can be expressed and recognized, must have a concordance with what happens in the classroom. Students should enjoy the freedom to select different forms of expression, different ways of developing creativity. At the same time, they have to be able to solve problems and share their ideas.

This is where the idea of "learning styles" is useful. At present, seven learning styles are recognized, of which I will try to show four styles that I have recognized in a classroom session. The recognized styles are: logical-mathematical, visual, interpersonal and intrapersonal. Gardner says that these differences "challenge an educational system that assumes that everyone can learn the same materials in the same way and that a uniform, universal measure suffices to test student learning. Indeed, as currently constituted, our educational system is heavily biased toward linguistic modes of instruction and assessment and, to a somewhat lesser degree, toward logical-quantitative modes as well." Gardner argues that "a contrasting set of assumptions is more likely to be educationally effective.

The session lasted just over an hour, the students had already worked on a computer programming project, in this session everything had to be ready and submitted. The last session lasted for just over an hour, the students had already worked on a computer programming project, in this session everything had to be ready and submitted. In previous sessions we had addressed each of the four intelligences separately, one hour of work for each of them, with examples and demonstrations. Then it was time to compose, as an orchestral composer does, each style with its tone and harmony should be part of the play.

I used a remote monitoring application to observe student screens. In a short time the conjunction of efforts was noted, as in an orchestra each instrument / screen interpreted its score. I share some screenshots.

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From playing to learning - Gamification

Image from Wikimedia Commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gamification-in-business-illustration-web.jpg

At the beginning of the year I wrote: "It is in this fertile soil where the first seed must be planted. I choose to plant the seed of challenge and curiosity, the seed of teamwork, the seed of #documenting4learning." Those were times of excitement and illusion.

The initial question remains: Do students learn through the use of games? Is computer programming a complex subject, which can be understood or taught with games?

Lets listen to an informal conversation (available only in Spanish) between a some students. They are talking about the firsts explorations. The talk revolves around the first explorations about the rules of the game and their challenges, to the first attempts to understand the basic rules of algorithm construction. There are attempts to guess some correct answers, but after a while and some basic readings about algorithms, the first correct results were not long in coming.

The weeks went by, the riddles in the computer programming games were increasingly complex and it was necessary to research in those topics a bit. Then, it was time to formalize some concepts and present results.

Some ideas about the video above:

1. At the beginning of the video the student defines some formal concepts, for each one of them illustrated with examples of the game used. Remember that the students did not have previous knowledge or were informal knowledge about what it means to program computers.
2. For each of the concepts, the student offers explanations in common terms to the end user, making it more understandable.
3. The screenshots are digitally intervened with the aim of annotating their contents. This indicates that the student can locate exactly the portion of the code on which the concept applies and explains it.
4. The student applies multiple intelligences in the description of the concepts. The use of songs is particularly interesting, since the concept of conditional expressions is usually a difficult concept to master by beginning programmers. The student is able to understand the concept and select a multimedia resource whose content is appropriate and correct.

Here the links to the coding games that were mentioned: 

• The silent teacher.
• Compute IT !

The Silent Teacher and the Compute IT ! games are original creations from: http://www.toxicode.fr/ They are great folks !

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The Raspberry Farm project 2019

By Gareth Halfacree from Bradford, UK (Raspberry Pi 3 B+) [CC BY-SA 2.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I think it's an excellent idea to take up projects that are valuable and that have yielded good results. One does this, not without reflecting on what has been learned previously. The rewarding task is to reread old articles, and reflect on the achievements and, above all, on those things that one would do differently. Better than before.

During the year 2018 we have made the experience of creating a computer farm with ten Raspberries pi 3. All with similar configurations, not identical, personalized in the style of each of its administrators (students in the fourth year of high school) If you want to know something about that endeavor, you can follow this link. Now, in the 2019 edition, we will stand on giants shoulders. The 2019 cohort will start where their predecessors left, with the hope to, not only accelerate and amplify good practices and positive outcomes, but with the goal to serve the school community.  With this in mind, the computer farm should be a resource that students throughout the school can access and use.

So, this year we decided to create a Web Server Farm, so all students throughout the school can publish their own websites. 

This will almost immediately have a positive impact, because it will allow students who are part of the DH cohort to publish their final web development projects.

The students already fulfilled the first phase, which was about the start-up of the Raspberries, the installation of the Raspbian operating system, the configuration of the remote access and some other technical details to integrate the nodes into the school data network.

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