Learning + Mobile + Apps + Games = Bewilderment

Bewilderment is a strange way to begin this discussion, but you have to put yourself back into the classroom and suspend all you think you know about teaching & learning for a few minutes.

Today’s students are more “Tec Savvy” than the previous generation; at least that’s what I see in print. They have access to more gadgets, gizmos, and games than any generation in history. They use this technology to communicate with one another and to learn, however this is where I have issue with the technology.

The literature seems to imply that if you just give students hours of multimedia, videos, and games that this is how to “reach” today’s learners. Want them to be successful, just give them what they want, i.e., multimedia rich content and learning will take place. Really? I disagree and can’t say this strongly enough! To me this just is a modern day version of the “funnel” theory, i.e., just pour the content in and magically learning will occur. Do you see the irony here? Now we pour in multimedia rather than words from a lecture, i.e., unless the lecture is prerecorded in which case we just “pour in” the prerecorded multimedia lecture.

To be successful a learner, whether the 2012 or the 1912 variety, learn by doing; yeah I said it. They need to get their hands dirty to learn. Whether they are doing longhand arithmetic or using a calculator to solve an equation, they need to do, not watch. They need to test a hypothesis as they move up the learning hierarchy as they learn how to internalize the material. I may be wrong here, but for me the goal of education is to teach learners to think and that happens by experimenting with and testing theories, assumptions, researching facts, and comparing ideas.

Am I ruling out the idea of online learning? Absolutely not! Learning takes place though the exchange of ideas and discussion boards satisfy this condition. So do blogs, journals, and wikis, as long as they can be read, commented on, ideas shared, tested, formed, and reformed. Can a short video clip, e.g., the bridge collapse in Seattle that demonstrates resonance, can be used to stimulate discussion, but that discussion has to be active and facilitated. The facilitator, i.e., the content system expert, can manage the discussion.

So I’m back to what I stated in a previous post, a good teacher’s a good teacher, and good teachers know how to “manage” a classroom and keep students engaged and learning. Multimedia and games, while nice to look at and play, just don’t cut it with me!