Student Engagement and Learning

Teachers, Students, and Engaged Learning

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A Google search on student engagement offers about 77,100,000 results.  It's an important topic for teachers, students, families, and the communities in which they live.  Children can't learn when they're not paying attention.  Excuses for 21st century students to be disengaged are as ridiculous as they are numerous.  It's technology:  attention spans are shorter because of the instantaneous nature of technology.  This is the information age.  If you can't say it in a sound bite, students won't listen.  It's a relationship problem.  Teachers don't care.  It's assessment.  Teachers don't have time to build relationships with students because they're too busy teaching to the test.  The reasons for lack of student engagement actually don't matter and can be refuted as easily as they're invented.

Check out http://blog.ted.com/2013/12/16/the-first-school-in-the-cloud-opens/ for an interesting perspective on how technology can be leveraged not only to increase learning but engagement.  The bottom line is that learning is about risk-taking.  Situations in which most students are willing to take risks historically involved relationship with the teacher.  When students feel safe, they will take risks in class and or with their teachers.   Visit  http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/firstyear/258http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/firstyear/258 for some interesting thoughts on risk taking in learning.  There's an emerging and ever-present resource for risk-taking that's available to most American students in the 21st century:  Technology.  When I was a classroom teacher I set up students' assignments on a moodle.  There I could post notes about learning, including videos and other internet links, in addition to posting quizzes and tests.  The quizzes were available for students to take as many times as they like before "the test", and were filled with gateway questions that either rewarded correct responses or redirected incorrect responses with an explanation for why another response would be better.  Students could take these as many times as they liked, without other students knowing, and without consequence to their grades.

The anonymity combined with access to experts that the internet facilitates provides unparalleled safety in learning in terms of numbers of students to whom it's available.  I also had the great advantage of having excellent rapport and trust with each of my students.  Even though I wasn't the best teacher, in fact I was always the youngest and least experienced teacher in my cohorts, my students regularly grew more academically than my peers'.  I attribute their growth to the extent that the boys and girls in my classroom felt safer, could take more risks, and had more opportunities for practice than students in other classes.   

Digital Devices - Darling or Devil?

Most teachers despise their students' having these at school.  They're "distracting" or "take away from the learning".  I even see signs posted in classrooms that read:  "Dear Students, I know you're texting in class.   Seriously, no one looks down at their crotch and smiles.  Sincerely, Your Teacher".  The irony is that these same teachers routinely complain that their students don't have enough access to computers, technology, and the internet.

The disconnect between what we want for our students and what we're willing to allow them in the classroom is ironic to the point of hypocrisy.  Sure they can be a distraction, but so can Santa, candy, and ill-fitting shoes.  What are we really doing to our students by disallowing their technology in the classroom?

What if students were challenged: "Let's see which team can find the most strategies for double-digit addition on the internet.  Ready, set, go!"  Students want to learn how to make video games?  Allow them to discover how to on line, and then use science and social studies standards around ideas like understanding the concept of scarcity for students to design a teaching game their peers can access.  Technology can help make education a lot more fun.  Check out this TedTalk on the importance of fun in learning: https://www.ted.com/talks/tyler_dewitt_hey_science_teachers_make_it_fun.

Webinars, KhanAcademy, and Ted Talks all exemplify a new kind of learning Will Richardson refers to in his Ted Talk Will Richardson - TEDxNYED.  With experts at our finger tips, why would we do anything other than encourage our young learners to explore what they have to say?  Video games are not to blame for making kids bored in classrooms, teachers are.  Children always want to have fun, as do most adult I know.  Children, along with marketers, and some very tallented educators have simply learned that much of life and learning truly can be fun.  It's the critical challenge of 21st century educators to make it that way.

"Devices" might seem like the devil but in fact are the darlings of building life-long learners in the 21st century and beyond.  We need to teach skills like filtering for relevant information, discovery, connecting with experts, and learning as we go to prepare our young learners for jobs that don't yet exist.  Operating from a fixed set of information is out dated in every arena.  My classroom was a device-friendly environment and this is the way of the future.