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The McGraw-Hill Education Research Foundation recently released a white paper, Technology and the Human Connection, about the role of technology in fostering human interactions in education. The paper’s authors are the three 2011 McGraw Prize winners and Steven L. Paine of the McGraw-Hill Education Research Foundation.
The three prize winners are Robert Beichner, Physics Professor at North Carolina State University, Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, MIT Media Lab, and Julie Young, President and CEO, Florida Virtual Schools. The winners were selected to honor their efforts to use “technology to advance learning science and transform education.”
Steven L. Paine, in his introduction to the paper, cites an article from the N.Y. Times entitled, In Classroom of the Future, Stagnant Scores, which states that technology-rich classrooms are not making students smarter or improving teaching. But Paine points out that “Technology also invites parents into the process, allowing them to learn with their children at home.” Technology can transform education and create more opportunities for personal interaction.
Mitch Resnick of the Media Lab at MIT says that his goal is to “design technologies that empower people to explore, experiment, and express themselves in new ways.” His efforts concentrate on collaborative activities that kindergarten students utilize. He wants his group to help design ways to encourage students to imagine what they want to do, create a project, and work with others and think about how the project went at the end. “We are developing a new generation of technologies that not only enable children to connect with new concepts and ideas but also enable them to connect with other people, providing new pathways for sharing, collaborating, and empathizing with one another.”
Resnick and his team created two software packages, Scratch and Computer Clubhouse, to encourage children to be creative. Scratch is a graphical programming software geared for children eight and older to create their own stories, games, animations, and simulations. About one million children are a part of the Scratch online community (http://scratch.mit.edu).
Julie Young started the Florida Virtual School (FLVS) in 1996 to assist those students who needed a different environment to learn in. Students who needed more options in their education found those options through FLVS. The FLVS uses no textbooks since the entire curriculum is online.
Students can create their own schedule, and instructors are available from 8am to 8pm and sometimes on the weekend. Students who feel marginalized because of illness, bullying, or disability can find acceptance at FLVS. The white paper includes letters from students to teachers that they have never met, but to whom they feel very connected.
Robert Beichner teaches physics at North Carolina State University and his goal is to encourage students to work together so the teacher can spend more time working with individual students.
While many physics classrooms might claim that they are unique because they have technology for their students to work with, Beichner says that what is unusual in his classroom are the seven foot tables. The tables promote what he calls active learning classrooms: students sitting at a table as a group, with computers to conduct research in response to hands-on activities, simulations, and roundtable discussions, become active learners who collaborate and communicate with each other to solve the problems.
Beichner calls his program SCALE-UP, which stands for “Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs.” This education environment has been used in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, engineering, and out of the sciences for literature and language courses at approximately 100 colleges and universities throughout the country. It is anticipated that the tables could work at the K-12 level.
Steven Paine of McGraw Hill concludes that while there are examples of technology reducing human contact and interaction, the work exemplified by the three prize winners … “demonstrate the positive interpersonal outcomes of technology-supported education.”
