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Art of Contemporary Learning
by Elizabeth Helfant

I grew up the child of an educator and often heard that teaching was an art. It made sense to me then as I could easily look at the teachers I had and knew some were painting masterpieces of learning and some, well, not so much. I hadn’t really thought much about that until yesterday when I was fortunate to be directed to CoLearning 2010, A Colorado Conversation. I listened in and participated a little in the conversations of some of the sessions. One conversation, a subset of a larger session topic on Information Overload, was about managing all the tools and resources that are available to enrich the classroom. It got me thinking about what those tools were, specifically in our environment but across the profession as well. Somehow the artist metaphor returned to me as I started to make some sense out of the toolkit that we use to design for learning and understanding. 

While my attempt at organization can be viewed on scribd (and should be before continuing to read), I also offer the explanation of the different levels below.

The Gallery - Level One Tools

The gallery is where the artwork is housed and where the value is measured. In terms of tools, it’s the tool that delivers content and keeps assignments and grades. It’s the portal solution or the CMS. In the open source world, it is Moodle. It is the tool that holds the links and documents, the entry ways to the content and creations of the class.

The Canvas – Level Two Tools

The level two tools -google apps, blogs, wikis, nings and social bookmarks- constitute the canvas of creativity, connection, and collaboration. These tools are staples of the contemporary classroom and have the power to extend learning across time and place. They allow ideas to be shared, audience to be cultivated, and discussions to develop deeper understanding. They facilitate collaboration and provide a backdrop to showcase both creative expression and student reflection of learning. They are the building blocks of participatory culture and social networking.

The Colors of Creativity – Level Three Tools

The level two tools hold content that can be as simple and as powerful as text but they can also hold a variety of other content that allows for an even greater level of creativity and demonstration of understanding. These tools are often more specific in their application and are embeddable in the other tools. They offer the ability to make timelines, comic books, animations, maps, quizzes, slideshows, data visualizations. You name it, there is an app for that! These apps live in the browser and require accounts so students need to be able to manage accounts and to utilize embed codes. They also need to understand creative commons licensing and intellectual property as these tools frequently open the doors to remixing content.

Frames and Materials for other Artwork –

There are other tools to help scaffold learning and to allow for focused content creation. These tools frame the development of content or support the development of ideas. Tools like DyKnow allow teachers to frame the classroom experience with tools that individualize the lessons, make the learning process more transparent and promote formative assessment and feedback. Tools like ClassSpot help frame and structure classroom collaboration. Wimba provides the framework for distance learning and real time collaboration. Discipline specific tools help support the development of ideas central to a discipline. They can often be used to push critical thinking. Stella, a systems modeling application can be used to have students investigate the relationship between various entities, create a model, run the model, and then try to figure out why it behaved the way it did. Real video editing applications focus a students work around telling a story- forcing them to think critically about the choices they are making to convey the meaning they intend to put forth.

Assigning Value – Tools of Assessment

Ultimately value must be assigned to what we create and consume. In the classroom, value lives, or should live, in assessment. There are many tools that can help with assessment. However, it is important to note that we should assess what we value and that means some pretty dramatic shifts might need to occur. Traditional quizzes, tests, and essays provide a narrow, one dimensional assessment of learning. Technology has given us a wealth of tools that allow us to participate in the learning process – to give feedback on a shared document or a wiki as the process occurs. These tech tools also provide mechanisms for student reflection. Research has shown that two things that have positive impact on student learning are student reflection and timely, positive feedback. It is time to leverage the tools we have in our toolkit to take advantage of what we know to be true.

The Master Artisian and Keeping the Craft Current

While it didn’t make the toolkit framework, the primary component of creating a rich learning environment for students still remains the Master Artisan, the teacher who uses all the tools at their disposal including their network and what research has shown to be true.  The issue at hand here is that a master artisan is never done creating new things. They don’t paint the same picture twice and may not even use the same medium for expression. Teachers need to learn from them and make sure that they are always updating, revising, and creating new learning experiences for their students. They need to model contemporary learning for their students. They need to leverage what research is telling us about how students learn. They need to commit to ongoing learning. My bookshelf is full of book titles (the most recent ones are Weimer’s Learner-Centered Classroom, Washburn’s Architecture of Learning, and Collins and Halverson’s Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology) that I believe it is my professional responsibility to read. Education has to be one of the few professions where it is remarkably easy to stagnate and to repeat things year after year. Mechanics, doctors, farmers, lawyers- most professions are forced to stay current in order to stay relevant and employed. That need is finally catching up to education. When I look at our toolkit, it is pretty vast and when we hire, we will need to hire someone who can take advantage of that toolkit. How many current teachers will have that skillset?

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth Helfant is the Upper School Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Mary Institute Country Day School, a JK-12 institution embarking on a 1:1 adventure. using Tablet PCs and DyKnow.