As I became
more accustomed with the Scratch environment this weekend, I realized I was
fascinated by the notion that I needed to come up with, in essence, an
empowering idea for an empowering idea. How, as a teacher, was I to use this
programming environment to empower young students to learn a topic – a topic
that may not interest them – while also allowing them to be imaginative,
independent learners that “construct” their own knowledge? And on top of that,
how was I to ensure that each student would be able to achieve a specific
educational goal (was the scientific topic understood or implied? How was I to
measure understanding?).
Inspired by
readings from the past two weeks and our class discussions involving students
applying concepts learned in class to this online programming environment – be
it through modeling, simulation, etc – I thought back to one particular science
unit in middle school that has always personally impacted me – cloud formation. I know, you're already excited. As a young child, I would look up and imagine the shape of clouds to be
particular animals, faces, and more. In middle school – I learned the names for
different shaped clouds and, to this day, every time I fly on a plane I think
back to my teacher (Ms. Baker) and I name off the different clouds I see --- Cirrus, Cumulus,
Nimbostratus, and so on.
My
empowering idea this week is this: students are to set up a simulation through
Scratch on the formation of clouds. Sure, they need to pay attention to shape,
altitude, sunlight, etc, but they can also have fun with it. Maybe they too
pretended clouds were various animals or people growing up. The clouds they
form can take shape as one of those characters. Maybe the Cirrus clouds up at
the higher altitudes are fast birds or angels – even UFOs. In the end, the
student is telling a story and me, as the teacher, will be able to see if they
are able to correctly associate their character with a certain cloud formation
based on size, altitude, or other factors.
I believe
this project captures, at a minimum, at least one of Papert’s three components
for an empowering idea (and potentially more, depending on the student); either
it can be powerful in its use, powerful in its connections, or it is powerful
in its roots and its fit with personal identity (Papert, 2000). In addition,
the project touches on the concept of emergent “levels” discussed in Wilensky
and Resnick’s 1999 article, “Thinking in Levels: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Making
Sense of the World” – it has the potential for students to utilize a
programming environment “designed as a medium for students to build models of
multi-leveled phenomena” – cloud formation is a “system with lots of
interacting parts.” (Wilensky, 1999).
I think all your questions about empowering ideas are great. Especially when we're talking about now just one or two kids but a project a whole classroom full of kids can engage in that empowers ideas for them. I like the cloud idea. That's something that all students can relate to in some way, they've all seen clouds at least. Even young kids can approach the project with some ideas. It depends on how open the task would be. And that relates to your question of how to evaluate the project in terms of science learning. What are the learning goals/objectives? If there's specific content you want them to learn, how can you design the project to allow for different kinds of engagement and not restrict children's ideas too much?
ReplyDeleteIt is funny you ask those questions: as soon as I wrote the bigger idea, my mind raced to - ok, it sounds good, but how can it effectively be implemented and I hope that can be the start of a great discussion.
DeleteI believe an understanding of how clouds are formed and an ability to label types of clouds correctly can be measured. It may also be worthwhile to add creativity and programming objectives (and if others agree I would love to hear possible ideas for addressing or measuring those objectives).
How do you feel about offering examples prior to starting the project instead of a set of preliminary instructions? In our projects on Scratch we were given a play-by-play on how to create the specific projects and, sure, it allowed for creativity in choosing sprites and backgrounds, but I think for a student it may be too disempowering. Maybe examples could spur difference ideas for each student. What do you think?
Hello Nicole,
ReplyDeleteI am already excited by the idea of clouds! And while trying to think of a way that this task could be approached, I instantly realized how challenging this could be.
I believe that Papert considered learning through programming as potentially empowering to ideas since it can reveal relations that are hard to perceive without the help of computers. Externalizing one's thinking through artifacts and contemplating the externalized thoughts offer an opportunity to both deepen one's understanding of the topic and to realize conceptual misunderstandings. So I wonder how this will be achieved in your program design.
Since you mentioned level analysis, I also wonder what would be the studied elements on the micro level? I have no idea about clouds and cloud formation, so I am really excited to see how you will be approaching this topic. Best of luck!
I had the exact same feelings! While the overall idea could potentially empower (and maybe be a bit fun), setting out specific learning objectives and the more in-depth design of the project may be tough!
DeletePerhaps it isn't a project that can be done in levels - maybe it is a simple exercise to support the memorization of cloud names. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing - if they make use of this memorization tool, students could potentially use it in other subjects.
It is sad how an exciting idea such as formation of clouds which any of us could find exciting and which is possibly also syntonic to any one of us could not be approached by the school curriculum at least at the very first of our thoughts. One prime issue I find really coming up again and again when students are to be let to learn in the ways inspired by constructionism and thinking in levels is that the curriculum that were fitted to the traditional model of teaching may not be good enough or may be underestimating what students could actually learn and experience using modern day technologies (not only scratch). If computer could really make it easy for a student to model concepts such as cloud formation would the school allow or feel attracted to teach such concepts? Remember, scratch is extensible which means, blocks which are necessary to support students to model a particular type of phenomenon can be developed using custom blocks. And these custom blocks could be added by the teachers according to the needs of their courses. To put the issue in another way, if we are to let the students learn in powerful way to be powerful in the way they may use the concepts learned or experienced, would the limited syllabus of a school curriculum be sufficient? If not, is it the issue of the computer or its software or the way of the learning through modeling or rather it is the issue of the QWERTY EFFECT as we are to be in its influence unfortunately and inevitably? Although, I have known the need of modeling clouds for developing games and I know it can be approached using concepts such as motion, gravity, etc. But I am more on the side of discussing: what to do with the strictness and stiffness of the school curriculum? And as I do not know much about US school system, but in our country normally teachers would not use examples other than what are there in the books thus the question comes, how a teacher should think and feel about this way of constructionism and in my view more far away style of emergent level to incorporate out of book and possibly out of curriculum examples and concepts?
ReplyDeleteThis comment really stuck with me and I have been feeling the same way for many years -- "One prime issue I find really coming up again and again when students are to be let to learn in the ways inspired by constructionism and thinking in levels is that the curriculum that were fitted to the traditional model of teaching may not be good enough or may be underestimating what students could actually learn and experience using modern day technologies (not only scratch)." I believe that technology not only has the potential for more individualized learning, but it may allow for teachers to focus on specific areas of teaching that may not be easily addressed via technology or even assessments.
DeleteI like your concept of customizing blocks - and even supporting students learning of customizing blocks (as I mentioned as a reply to Carol's comment - if this project is more of a memorization support, students could potentially create these blocks and build stories or environments that support memorization in another subject area).
It is interesting that you mention your experience with cloud development for game environments. I think there would be a large group of students potentially interested in becoming gaming programmers and I see a tie in with cloud formation for the project and cloud formation in game design!