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Discovering Your Topic
or "The Importance of Keeping Things in Context"© Tom March
first published: Multimedia Schools Magazine
September / October, 1999 - Volume 6, Number 4
This column began with lasts month's article about the 10 Stages to educational Web-use Nirvana. This month begins the process of elaborating on the stages. Because the early stages recommend that educators find personal value in the Web before using it with students, those new to the Web should pause here to explore, reflect, and evaluate the Web for themselves. Last month's article provides suggestions on how you might go about this. The following commentary ventures into the design phase of creating student activities. As such, it advocates one of my rigid and dogmatic beliefs: if we're going to use the Web with students, let's make the most of it!
Introduction
Between workshop sessions recently, a teacher approached with questions about how she could start to use the Web with her students. Within a couple sentences it became clear that this was a creative and enthusiastic educator. Being new to the Web, her main question was whether I could help her find a site on the Lord of the Flies that a colleague had told her about. The fates were kind that day and within a couple clicks, we'd found it. Elegant graphics, clear design, solid content, and some interesting activities showed that effort had gone into the development of this Web site. Yet, from my perspective, such a strategy for Web-use was a disappointment. And still, this example is representative of many Web-based activities I see being used with students. The following article presents some ideas about how accenting particular features of the Web can produce more challenging learning experiences for students and teachers.
A Period of Transition
When a new technology comes along, enthusiastic and creative educators want to put it to use. Even if our vision's a little fuzzy, what's clear is that we want to explore ways to enhance student learning. Understandably, initial applications tend to mimic things we're more familiar with, awaiting an increased comfort level for more creative and effective uses that maximize the technology's particular powers. Common examples?
First using word processors to enter text as we did with typewriters. Weren't we so pleased with spellchecking and not having to fuss with correction fluid that more advanced features like adding graphics, designing layouts, and doing mail merges could wait till later?
Using authoring tools like HyperCard or HyperStudio as fancy flashcards. Didn't the graphics, animations and sounds so enhance linear, info-learning goals that creating more advanced, non-linear multimedia exhibits didn't dawn on us till we became more comfortable with the programs?
Using facsimile machines as long distance photocopiers. Didn't it take persistently rumbling stomachs for us to realize we could fax our lunch orders to the corner Deli?
Okay, so not every use of technology supports advanced learning. Some, like television perhaps, rarely approach their potential benefit to education. Many people would say the same about computers. From my vantagepoint, only with the Web do computers have a chance to truly revolutionize the teaching and learning process. Thus, with the wholesale introduction of the Web into our schools, we should do our best to see that the Web's potential doesn't go underutilized. Based upon observations of typical teacher and student practices, depending on who controls the mouse, Web-use in schools may devolve into the world's most hopeless encyclopedia or an unhealthy smorgasbord of games, chat rooms, and fanzines. This warning also raises an interesting point: those who become most comfortable, become most innovative. So if we leave the Web for the kids to figure out, where does that put innovative education? Did I hear someone say, "With Gameboys and Spice Girls?"
What's so Big about the Web?
During presentations to educators, I usually begin with this question. We then spend some time browsing a few Web sites that represent my vision of the Web (http://anew3rs.com). This highly personal and idiosyncratic perspective of the Web illustrates my premise in the 10 Stages that before you use the Web with others, you have to achieve a clear vision for yourself. This vision will then inform and inspire the way you use the Web with students. Ultimately, my answer to the question, "What's so big about the Web?" involves the complexity that makes true learning more about context than content. Curtis Pavel states it clearly when he says, "The Killer App of the Internet is people." This highlights that the human condition, not discrete datum, is what makes the Web most valuable.
We need to dispense with the view that information is what it's all about. As anyone knows who's been on the Web more than one hour, it's a hopelessly unready reference. When a search for "Kosovo" turns up over 200,000 hits and it's 15 minutes till recess, you'd be happier looking for a needle in ten haystacks. The Web's also a miserable fact file. Just ask hatewatch.org about hatewatch.com. But these flaws lay at the heart of why the Web's such a great learning medium. The educational benefit of the Web comes when we use it to access those tricky parts of an authentic learning experience that are often lacking in our traditional school subjects. These tricky parts go by such names as reality, inter-relatedness, diversity, and change. Thus, rather than looking to the Web for information, we engage students in more profound learning when we view topics linked to the vibrant context in which they exist.
Who Says So?
But I wouldn't want you to take my word for this. Leadership and wisdom both come from within, so you'll have to work through what makes sense based on your educational philosophy and experiences with learners. The unhidden agenda I'm pushing urges a learning-centered perspective. If we hope students will develop a sophisticated semantic network of meaning and understanding, we can't serve them pre-packaged information. Constructivism suggests that if students are to acquire an understanding of complex and ill-defined domains, they need to interact with a rich array of contextualized examples. Through a sifting and winnowing, learners compare the new experiences with prior learning and assimilate what fits into their cognitive schema. Compare this to the binge, purge, brain flush that typifies how learners respond to a content delivery model.
Besides the more theoretical contributions of constructivism and schema theory, the promising practices of using essential questions and authentic assessments support more compelling learning. When faced with a chaotic Web of inputs, unless students are equipped with a few big questions, they're likely to become just so much node kill along the Info Superhighway. Similarly, by using contextualized topics, learning tasks are more authentic and results can receive real world feedback. Finally, in case anyone's not convinced, perhaps the New Plagiarism will be more persuasive. With the motto "Download your homework," schoolsucks.com has become a frequently filtered site on many school networks. But The Evil House of Cheat (http://www.cheathouse.com) is also willing to help out. As, of course, are the millions of Web pages waiting to become our students' latest copy/paste masterpiece. However, when we coach students to create specific, thematic questions and then facilitate the learning process, we can avoid the New Plagiarism while also supporting sound educational practices. End of soapbox.
Sampling Contextualized Learning Returning to the opening anecdote about The Lord of the Flies, let's get to the heart of my argument: traditional education tends to focus on content when context can provide a more challenging and powerful experience. For example: how compelling is asking students to recall facts related to characters, plot, and teacher-taught symbols, themes, or interpretations? This was the kind of information available on the Web site that my friend had sought. These things are good to know, but compare this to having students explore Web sites on youth gangs, neo-Nazis, soccer-match hooliganism, and moche pits. Now help them address essential questions like "Why is it that 'When the cats away, the mice will play'?" "Is everyone vulnerable to Groupthink?" "Are children inherently evil?" How might students read The Lord of the Flies now? Sure, access to the Web isn't required to make such a rich experience happen. More important are a good instructional design and teacher-facilitation. However, with the day-to-day press of school schedules, accessing the Web is easier than flipping though magazines, dubbing video clips, or searching somewhat dated stacks.
As a former English teacher, I don't want to single out my colleagues so let's see how this shift from content to context works across the curriculum. While recently teaching a WebQuests course online, I had the chance to work with a number of talented educators. One participant chose the topic of the Underground Railroad. The initial activity made terrific use of reflective journals, but focused exclusively on the pre-Civil War Era. This is fine, but underutilizes the Web. If we shift our focus from content to context, contemporary juxtapositions bring a richness and complexity to the topic. What might happen if students accessed sites proclaiming anti-immigrant sentiments, depicting illegal aliens or "Pollos" running across the US - Mexico border, posting US legislation or accounts of refugees escaping oppression. And what if the teacher helps students plumb thematic questions like, "When is it right to help those in need?" "What are borders and are they important?" "What's the difference between protecting what you have versus keeping it from those who have not?" By contextualizing the Underground Railroad, students have a chance to construct meaning relevant to their lives and rooted not in a distant history, but rife with contemporary implications.
To round out the sampler with a topic from science, one that many educators choose is the environment. Because of its present day relevance, competing interests, and the absolute interdependence of habitats, it's difficult to think of the topic separately from its context. So what can the Web add here? The stories of real people. Current news articles share how the development vs. conservation debate is expressed within communities. Big developers post their corporate Web sites as do non-profit and citizen groups. Students are placed in the center of a complex debate. What about pursuing a line of questioning? "Are homes or habitats more important?" "Is there an acceptable level of negative impact on endangered species?" "When changes impact the present and future, whose interests should take precedence?" Some pretty sticky issues for a science class, but won't these issues affect many students during their lives?
Don't let the wording of the example questions intimidate you. Essential questions that go to the heart of important themes can be expressed in more simple terms for younger students without diminishing their significance. In each of the examples above, the first question was written with a younger audience in mind. If you need some words of inspiration, you might recall a famous quote from Jerome Bruner, who in 1960 said, "Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development." Yes! But how? Let's conclude this article with a review of strategies for moving from a content focus to one that places the topic within a rich and authentic context.
Discovering your Topic: The Creative Brief
Many instructional design models begin with a first phase that's referred to as a "Front End Analysis." The purpose of an FEA is to clarify, up front, such things as educational goals, the needs of the learners, and special resources or constraints related to the project. Although "Front End Analysis" is a fine phrase, for the development of Web-based activities, I prefer "Creative Brief" because it connotes an artistic openness to discovery, which I find appropriate when working with the Web's quirky offerings.
The Creative Brief is intended to help you achieve a few key things quickly: choose a general topic, identify learning gaps, and brainstorm a lively "What-If Inventory." We'll look at each briefly in turn, but if you try this process, begin with any aspect of the Creative Brief that most excites you. For example, we typically look at our curriculum and see what topics are coming up soon. There's incentive in those empty squares in our lesson plan books! Relatedly, you may have encountered an important gap in your students' understanding or skills, so that's where you should begin. Finally, perhaps a new resource like access to a lab with a T-1 connection or a new ISDN-based videoconferencing unit has prompted you to develop this activity. Fine. The main point is to follow the flow of your excitement. Speaking of which, we've built the Creative Brief into Web-and-Flow Interactive, our next generation of Web-based curriculum design tools.
Choosing a General Topic
Choosing a topic can be as simple as opening a course textbook, conferring with curriculum standards, or getting a new class set of novels. These are often the starting points for curriculum units. But since we're interested in working the Web for education, we may find that discovering the true topic for the Web-based portion of the unit may take a little more magic.
A first suggestion is to encourage your own brainstorming, accept all ideas even if some don't seem great. Since our minds work by association when we do this kind of thinking, critiquing only cuts off potential ideas. There will be plenty of time later to fuss over the logistics and practicalities. If you want some help generating ideas, you can try The Idea Machine. This javascripted page provides 50 ideas that might help you conjure that magic.
Once you have some potential ideas, see if it's big enough to be a source for essential questions. This usually means looking at the unit level (The Civil War), not the activity level (the Battle of Bull Run). The best topics seem to be large enough that you have some wiggle room to discover the best learning goal based upon an inventory of potential resources and student needs.
The What-If Inventory
Take some time to live in the Lands of What-If? and Why Not? As school educators it's hard to look with wide enough eyes. Too often the nature of teaching prompts us to think in routine ways: a specified curriculum, compartmentalized time frames, segmented subject matter. Many of the most rewarding teaching experiences happen when we open the doors to the real world. So take this time to explore what you wish you could be teaching, in the way you want, using ideal resources. Successful grants, win-win partnerships, and special programs often grow from the seeds of a ripe idea. Reflect on what you're interested in learning, any changes in curriculum, upcoming events, new technologies, or special interests of your community. Let these ideas fill into the context of the topic you've chosen.
Target a Learning Gap
Now that you have a general topic and a healthy list of all that could possibly enrich the learning experience, we're ready to give serious attention to the heart of curriculum design: student needs and abilities. The best way I know to look at the topic and how it might advance sophisticated learning is to ask one question:
What's educationally most interesting about this topic?
Without asking this question, amidst the press of school schedules, it's too easy to go on automatic pilot and do something that keeps students busy, not necessarily busy learning. Also, even though you may be creating an activity to use with students over one or two days, not the weeks of your unit, by addressing this powerful question, you could hit upon a defining vision that will help guide the rest of the unit. Adjuncts to the question might include: "What makes up the parts to this topic?" "What opinions do people hold about it?" and "How does the topic function, happen, or inter-relate?" These questions can help you identify valuable learning at the core of the general topic. As an expert educator, as well as adult, your broader perspective is one of the most valuable things you can share with students. By asking these questions, you're preparing to help students connect or contextualize the content in the unit to their interests, prior learning, and to find ways to facilitate the assimilation of new information. If we make this shift to context, we're inviting students to do more than copy, paste, then waste their assignments. Finally, a future column will outline some learning-centered scaffolds you can use depending on the learner needs that arise. We'll discuss such goals as encouraging an affective connection, acquiring knowledge, and engaging in higher order thinking.
Conclusion
By looking to ourselves and contextualizing a vision using the Web that accents its unique characteristics, we can orchestrate experiences for learning that go beyond a step-and-fetch-it approach. Although many of the learning theories and promising practices have been around for years, it's access to this splendid mess that is the Web that empowers us to design robust learning experiences. Once we have discovered a topic, what's next? Next issue we'll explore " Thinking thru Linking," a strategy for identifying how different types of Web links can be used to target different learning goals. Until then, keep working the Web for education.