Teaching Web 2.0 skills without technology
I was thinking the other day about how to teach kids in school Web 2.0 skills, prompted by my friend Brad Ovenell-Carter’s blog post on figuring out how young is too young,
Now my kids, don’t go to school, but they work actively in non-technological settings with collaboration. They spend a lot of time together co-creating games, scenarios, worlds and activities. My daughter, at 11, is helping out in a friend’s store and she helped train other workers on the inventory system the other day before taking inventory with her new trainees. She has also been working with another friend to start up an Amnesty International group on our home island.
The discussion on Brad’s blog has been about critical skills in reading, learning how to read content that is user produced on the web. To me Web 2.0 is about co-creating, so responsible writing is a key piece of the work, so in thinking more about how to teach this I thought about what a Web 2.0 based exam room would look like.
What if we tested kids on collaboration instead of individual achievement? What if a class of 30 kids was given an exam one day but instead of every student getting a test paper there would only be six papers in the whole room. The class would need to divide into groups of five and complete the exam together. The Pass mark would be 95% and they would be allowed to talk to each other, steal ideas, look in books, phone a friend, whatever. Each team of five would be responsible for the overall quality of their own answers, so they would also have to make quality decisions. If there were several long form questions, essays and the like, they could divide the work up, or have a couple of kids draw up an outline and bring it to the group for polishing.
In most school settings, this would be called “cheating.” In the real world this is how it works.
It’s not just about critical reading or accurate writing…it’s about providing real opportunities to practice collaborating and noticing that when you work together, you get a better result than if you work on your own.
Anyone know any teachers out there that have tried something like this?
Hi Chris,
I gave your idea of a collaborative test a run and was impressed. I use variations regularly, though not frequently–yet. It’s a great tool.
As I said in my response to your comments on my blog (http://bit.ly/ZlnT), the structure of most schools inhibits this sort of collaborative work. Students in most schools work in a fiercely competitive market economy. Students trade products–essays, tests, projects–for grades and, whatever else schools say they do to develop the whole student, grades are far and away the most valuable thing. At the yearly awards ceremony at my daughters old high school, the whole evening’s program builds toward the presentation of the Bronze, Silver and Gold medals for top academic achievement. They save the best for last, in other words, and that sends a pretty strong message. The GPA for the three recipients is typically separated by a few thousandths of a percent! Never mind that that is a statistically insignificant difference; it sends a very loud signal that grades are so important, so fantastically precious, that adults will make character distinctions based the possession of the minutest amounts. It is something like saying Sally is better than Johnny because she has $100,000 and he has $99,999.
The effect is to make grades themselves the object of learning. And that’s weird because grades aren’t objects or things. They’re measures of things, like inches or calories. Alas, once we begin substituting abstractions and symbols for real and substantial things, we begin divorcing ourselves from reality. (Fr. Robert Farrar Capon writes a pleasant musing on this in the Supper of the Lamb, which you’d love and must read.) This also explains, I think, the tendency for students to jump to Sparks Notes instead of working through tough books on their own. They’re not cheating or being lazy: If the business of school is, well, to do business, that is to trade goods for grades, they are on the contrary being highly efficient producers making smart use of resources available to them.
It’s hard to escape. Even at my school, which as an independent school has more liberty than a public school, I have an obligation to prepare my students to cope well in what comes next for most of them: my daughter’s old high school.
I think you basic premise is right. But Brad is also right. Which is probably why some of us homeschool 🙂
Thanks, Brad, because now I have a better answer for why I homeschool. Having been in that system myself, including as a university professor, I was really frustrated with how thoroughly it programmed kids to focus on grades and discount learning. And your explanation makes total sense of why that is. Is it any wonder that our culture is so anti-intellectual?
I truly enjoy the conversations I have with Brad. Sharing the odd pint with him is a true pleasure.
Chris (and others)
You have got me thinking about collaborative tasks/tests that I can bring to my half day of parent-lead activities at my son’s school. Thanks!
Geoff
Hello Chris, enjoyed the reflections and the comments. Your testing quandary prompts me to share my testing style–I teach Technical Theater at a liberal arts college. I use a blended learning approach but when it comes to midterms and finals, the students ask: what is going to be on the final? And I reply, your final was yesterday’s production–and you did great!
Regards,
Jan