Kim Mowery's Notes on Teaching and Technology, I

1. Gabriel brought up some terrific points in his email of 2/24, and I think we might want to focus on them for a bit. One of his points was: "Although I finally recognize the value in this approach: "the process allows the discovery and correction of misconceptions while it gives purpose to learning tasks. Students need a sense that their work is important, that it matters...", I still find the necessary steps threatening somehow: "knowledge-building activities of students must not end with privately held constructions. Students...ideas...need to be shared in a critical light...assessed against rigorous standards." (pg 13) This thought, and others, begs some of the following questions:

• a) To what extent do we "accept" the new, reformed model of school?

  I would imagine that we all generally agree with the goals of school reform, including bright, thinking motivated young students who love school. Especially, maybe, as modeled in the ACOT program. We probably all agree that the tactics are appealing, as well: small classes, hands-on projects, student-teacher interaction, high levels of technology etc. But at what point do these goals and tactics become unrealistic? I think this is especially useful to consider as we create our programs. We spend a lot of class time talking about how, in a perfect world, our programs should work and what they should do (from a reformist standpoint)... but we are dealing clients with expectations that might not jive with our ideas.

• b) Do you accept ACOT as a model classroom? What did you "like" about it? Dislike?

  I found myself going back and forth on this point as I read Sandholtz. Partly, I feel this was due to the fact that at some points, I felt as though the book was an advertisement for the program. Propaganda, especially in the first chapter. As we read further, though, we get into the personal reactions of the teachers - and they're not all glowing (though, somehow, I feel the authors manage to make the teacher who "retired" from ACOT seem like... well, like she just didn't have it in her or something) And that's where the conflict begins: programs and reforms and innovations can work perfectly on paper, but can run into snafoos on the ground.

• c) How are teachers a variable of the culture of the classroom? Of what students' learn? Of the "success" of our programs? (I apologize to groups that are not in k-12 settings... this might not be as directly applicable to your situations, but I would hope no less interesting) What can we take away from the ACOT experience that might be useful in terms of our own projects - obviously on a much smaller scale - especially as it relates to teachers? OR How do we take into account the fact that the teacher is an incredibly important variable which will determine how our program succeeds - but we little to no control over this variable?

  I started thinking about this as I read the teachers' entries in Sandholtz, and even more as we talked with Bil on Tuesday. There are so many factors that go into creating a classroom that are controllable: number of students, resources, curriculum, time in the school day, etc. Along the same lines, we are in control of so many factors of our programs. But once the school day actually gets going, or once our program is actually installed on that school computer, we give the control to the teacher (and somewhat less so to the students?). How does that influence, or not influence, our programs? Or the way we plan our programs? The ACOT teachers identified the computers in their classroom as taking away some of their order (or "control" as Bil referred to it yesterday). Is this something to keep in mind? I realize I am making a humble reach of a comparison to the technology given by ACOT, and the technology we will "bestow" upon them.

• d) Please bring thoughts you have from Tuesday's class, as I feel much of what we talked about related directly to Sandholtz; it's the first reading we've had that describes what actually goes on in classrooms with computers, and Bil's talk really spoke to that (I felt). Also, if you have any reactions to Gabriel's or Roger's emails from Tuesday (2/24) bring them as well. We haven't really discussed them over e-mail, and I think they're very interesting.