09 Nov 2005 - 04:57

bookless classroom

Via Joanne Jacobs, I came across this article in the Deseret News about a middle school math teacher who has replaced his entire curriculum with activities on elementary math websites.

Jerry Mangus' textbook-less teaching has dazzled the U.S. Department of Education.

Mangus, who teaches fifth- and sixth-grade math at Plymouth Elementary, uses only computers to teach fractions and other numerical concepts to kids. He's built computer labs in his school, each of his students has his or her own machine, and their test scores have leaped.

For his efforts, the federal education department on Wednesday bestowed Mangus with its No Child Left Behind Act American Star of Teaching Award. The award, for which the department received some 2,000 applicants, goes to one teacher in every state and Washington, D.C.

"He's someone who has gone far and above," said Carolyn Snowbarger, director of the department's Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative, who presented the award.

Gone over and above? Even if this turns out to be the best thing ever, he's basically ceded his job to these web pages he sends his kids to. He's gotta be putting out less effort than ever before.

But this does make me wonder.

When Ben was about six, his spoken language was in trouble. He could speak, but there was often up to a 15-second lag between your asking him a question, and him responding. That's way too long for normal discourse.

We got him a copy of a computer game called Earobics, which is marketed as an aid for weak readers -- the idea being if a kid can link the written symbol with the sounds he is hearing, he can learn phonics and start reading better. In Ben's case it worked in a sort of inverted way. Very quickly after we began with Earobics, he began responding more rapidly in his spoken language, because the computer would prompt him for a response, and then something unhappy-making would happen if he didn't respond (for example, in one game, a balloon would pop -- he HATED the sound of popping balloons).

We decided that the computer was a good tool to use in this case, because no matter how we tried, we humans couldn't be consistent enough in dealing with his unresponsiveness. We'd give him a little more time, or another prompt, before giving up. The computer, conversely, was machinelike and unforgiving; the consequence came down 3 seconds after he'd been cued, invariably.

So, in that case, computers were just the right tool. Here's Mangus's explanation for why they've been successful for his students:

The key is the immediate feedback computers provide, Mangus said. Kids don't waste time doing homework wrong, and then feel the frustration of bombing out when they get the answers the next day, Mangus said.

Of course, I check Ben's math homework every night, so he gets almost-instant feedback. But I can see where he might prefer instant feedback from a computer, rather than me. And gee, even I might prefer that...

But I still believe you've got to get a kid to do math with his hand. Maybe not all the time, but some of the time. And there are also conceptual problems that you run into when you try to get a calculator or computer to do the work of a teacher (check out this post for an example).

So, if this guy is doing something right -- and there's so many questions left open here, such as: how is he assured that the kids are covering all the topics they are supposed to get in the grade they're in? -- then how is he getting around the downside of using computers in the classroom?

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You guys have amazing instincts.

Back when I was at NAAR, Michael Merzenich's program, FAST FORWARD, was the hot thing. It cost thousands of dollars to buy and implement (and I do mean implement).

I had an off-the-record conversation with a major dyslexia researcher who warned me away from Merzenich.

I asked if there were any computer-based programs he would recommend, and he said:

Earobics

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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I was going to write a post about this teacher myself.

Here's what I think: our math curricula are so bad that a computer curriculum, which we know from Jakob Nielsen's research strains the eyes and radically slows reading, is an improvement.

That said, I think this program would be excellent if the students printed their worksheets & problems out and did them by hand.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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Here is Jakob Nielsen on teenagers:

Many people think teens are technowizards who surf the Web with abandon. It's also commonly assumed that the best way to appeal to teens is to load up on heavy, glitzy, blinking graphics.

Our study refuted these stereotypes. Teenagers are not in fact superior Web geniuses who can use anything a site throws at them. We measured a success rate of only 55 percent for the teenage users in this study, which is substantially lower than the 66 percent success rate we found for adult users in our latest broad test of a wide range of websites. (The success rate indicates the proportion of times users were able to complete a representative and perfectly feasible task on the target site. Thus, anything less than 100 percent represents a design failure and lost business for the site.)

Teens' poor performance is caused by three factors:
insufficient reading skills
less sophisticated research strategies
dramatically lower patience level

We did confirm that teens like cool-looking graphics and that they pay more attention to a website's visual appearance than adult users do. Still, the sites that our teen users rated the highest for subjective satisfaction were sites with a relatively modest, clean design. They typically marked down overly glitzy sites as too difficult to use. Teenagers like to do stuff on the Web, and dislike sites that are slow or that look fancy but behave clumsily.

Why are there so many misconceptions about teens? Two reasons. First, most people in charge of websites are at the extreme high end of the brainpower/techno-enthusiasm curve. These people are highly educated and very smart early adopters, and they spend a lot of time online. Most of the teens they know share these characteristics. Rarely do people in the top 5 percent spend any significant time with the 80 percent of the population who constitute the mainstream audience.

Second, when you know several teenagers, the one super-user in the bunch is most likely to stand out in memory and serve as the "typical teen" persona, even though he or she is actually the outlier. Teens who don't volunteer to fix your VCR when it's blinking "12:00" are not the ones you remember.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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Grownups don't read web sites.

They scan web sites.

If grownups don't read web sites, you can imagine what teens are doing.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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Here's a $149 report on teenagers & website usability:

Teenagers on the Web: Usability Guidelines for Web Design for Teens

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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This is really interesting: a WIRED report on teens and usability.

It begins with interactivity, Nielsen said.

"That seems to be the common denominator," said Nielsen, who for the study observed American and Australian teenagers using dozens of websites across a variety of genres. They want to be "doing something as opposed to just sitting and reading, which tends to be more boring and something they say they do enough of already in school."

Nielsen explained that the best interactive elements include message boards, polls, quizzes, the ability to ask questions of experts, and tools that let teens construct their own web pages.

[snip]

Another element teens find attractive is the use of photographs and images that relieve text of the burden of communicating ideas, but that don't weigh down a page. And while adults don't like cluttered web pages or too much writing either, he added, they are significantly more tolerant of a heavier text-to-images ratio.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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The secret to this guy's success is:

• completely individualized instruction, with students moving at their own pace

• constant feedback, via the instant grading function of the web site

• web site interactivity, via the answering of problems & receiving of scores

• (probably) low levels of text-chunks to illustration and problem sets

This is a case where the many positives outweigh the significant negatives.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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web sites teens like:

SparkNotes

One was SparkNotes, which offers study guides on subjects from math to chemistry to SAT preparation. He explained that the teens in his study enjoyed the site's combination of useful information, uncluttered appearance and interactivity; its interface also made it easy for teens to find what they needed to complete school assignments.

(I took one look at the homepage of Spark Notes & was blown away by the clutter!)

Call State Mentor

Teens Health

[pause]

hoo boy

Teens Health is depressing.

Here are today's topics:

• Tattoos
• What's the Right Weight for My Height?
• Is My Penis Normal?
• All About Menstruation
• Cutting

I'm hearing from friends who work with teens that cutting is now 'hot.'

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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And you guys are giving me grief about Steinberg. [: •

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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I need an emoticon for hair on fire

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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Doug!

That's your department!

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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Instant feedback is the Answer To Life.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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from Teen Health:

It can be hard to understand why people cut themselves on purpose. Cutting is what experts call an unhealthy coping mechanism. This means that the people who do it have not developed healthy ways of dealing with strong emotions, intense pressure, or upsetting relationship problems.

Yes, that explains it.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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OK, I'm now reading the article....

This guy is doing everything right, except these kids need some paper and pencil time. Basically, this is a behaviorist, DI approach to teaching math. Immediate feedback, individual progress, teach to mastery—with peers & observational learning thrown into the mix (an element classic behaviorists have neglected).

It's absolutely true that you learn more when you try to teach a subject you think you know.

That's what he's got these kids doing.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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I'd love to know what math web site he's using.

Probably SparkNotes!

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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"Second, when you know several teenagers, the one super-user in the bunch is most likely to stand out in memory and serve as the "typical teen" persona, even though he or she is actually the outlier. Teens who don't volunteer to fix your VCR when it's blinking "12:00" are not the ones you remember."

My impression of teenagers and computers is that they know more than their parents, but that isn't saying much. This gives them the reputation of being much better than they are. They think so too. I have talked with many who B.S. and pretend to know much more than they do. They get away with it with their parents, so they try it with all adults.

I usually tell them that the people they can fool aren't worth fooling, and the people who aren't fooled are not going to be impressed. In fact, I tell them that saying "I don't know." can be much more impressive than pretending you know more than you do.

-- SteveH - 09 Nov 2005

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This is a classic example of the polarization of Americans (Westerners in general): Computer Good, therefore Book Bad.

It's ludicrous to say, No textbooks ever.

If you're saying No American math textbooks, OK.

But if you're saying No Singapore textbooks, no Russian textbooks, no Saxon textbooks, No Algebra on Call, then forget it.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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My impression of teenagers and computers is that they know more than their parents, but that isn't saying much.

LOL

It's true.

One of the topics of discussion at the Coffee with Principal Fried was Irvington's new edline website.

It's a great idea—you can find all your child's grades & assignments in one place, online.

But hardly any teachers are using it.

Turns out they're all technology-phobic, so the principals are pursuing a strategy of having the early adopters (which includes Christopher's math teacher) persuade the phobics by example.

These are middle-aged, tenured teachers earning 6 figures a year.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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hmm

I just checked Ms. Kahl's math site for the first time.

It stops at November 7.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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Well, I don't see any grades posted anywhere.

Ed says he found some.

This may have something to do with the reason why tenured middle-aged teachers don't want to spend hours of what remains of their lives dorking around with some edu-website.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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I wonder how much we're paying for edline.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Nov 2005

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"I need an emoticon for hair on fire."

Hmm, how about:

≈∂8-O

-- DougSundseth - 09 Nov 2005

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If your hair is on fire, it seems reasonable that you'd be screaming too.

8-)

-- DougSundseth - 09 Nov 2005

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I had a class in college that essentially had no textbook. I hear there's an undergrad level course that runs here at Western with no book. Several others use textbooks written by the profs who teach the course. Why should this be surprising?

-- PaulMiller - 10 Nov 2005

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Title:	bookless classroom
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	CalculatorsAndComputers
LogDate:	200511082334