I might be wrong on this.  Feel free to posit your opinion and help me figure out what needs figuring.

There is a philosophy of technology in education that says we should afford students the chance to interact and explore specific technology experiences to ensure exposure to the technology.  Let me give you an example.

A program could be established at a school allowing all students at all grade levels in the building to engage in a short unit on digital video editing.  The unit would be done for the sake of exposing students to the process and skills of digital video editing as many of them may have cause to use those skills in a future class or occasion where they would employ the learned skills.  We also want to expose as many students as possible to the process as it may spark an inert interest and fan it into a full flame of passion for the experience, and thus, give cause for the said student to pursue a career in the field of video editing.  We also want to make sure all students in the building have the opportunity to have a common experience and exposure, so we’d make sure we work the video editing unit into a rotation outside the general classroom to ensure all students have the experience.  If we left it up to the general education teachers, it may well be that some students wouldn’t have the experience as their teachers may not be comfortable with the technology, or have the time, and thus not choose to do a digital video editing experience embedded in their class.

So the philosophy is to have all students work with digital video editing outside the general classroom to give them exposure and skills for the future.

Frankly, I don’t agree with this philosophy.  This is where I could be wrong.

I believe we should work to create both an opportunity and cause for teachers to have access to the necessary environment where they use the digital video editing as a means to engage students in embedded learning.  Allow an english teacher to dynamically engage literacy by creating a lesson that utilizes this technology.  Allow science students to demonstrate scientific principles by creating a video representation of a concept of study.  Allow foreign language students to produce a video entirely in the language they are learning.

I believe if we isolate the experience for the sake of affording the experience, we’ve made it solely about the experience and not the learning.  Yes, digital video editing is rife with opportunities for learning, but wouldn’t those opportunities be magnified when coupled with specific curricular goals?

To me, the former feels like the “just in case” model we’ve been trying to move away from for a long time.  The problem is, if we use the “just in time” of the latter, some students may well not get the experience.  But, is that a problem?  Do we think every student needs this experience?

Personally, I think we want the latter.  This is the epitome of my philosophy of technology.  My philosophy has been disagreed with as of late, and I’m wondering if I’m wrong.

Am I?

Thanks to BAMCAT for the Flickr image.

The average American student will take American history at least four times in the span of his or her education.  How many of those people can now recall why the Battle of Quebec, fought in 1759, was an important event in American history?

I was talking about this concept with a teacher this week, and his response was, “Ah, a perfect point for why we need repeated practice.  Just like in sports, there’s a lot of value in having our students repeat content, like repeating a skill in practice for any given sport.  If we repeat it enough, each time the student will get it a little better than the time before, and eventually he or she will master it.”  A little paraphrasing there on my part, but the essence is captured and preserved entirely.

This conversation immediately brought to mind the recent tension between the content-focused camp versus the skills-based camp.  And that gave me pause to reflect.

In my estimation, this is one of the foundational, keystone issues we’re facing in education today.  Do we focus on the skills of learning how to learn, or do we focus on the content that we believe students need to know in order to be able to apply skills contextually?  Or, as many advocate, do we need to accept these two aren’t mutually exclusive and strike a balance between the two?  Balance sounds great, but if we’re going to advocate for balance, that means we’re accepting that we need some foundational level of content with which to bestow upon our students.

How do we decide what constitutes the foundational content knowledge?

Just this morning, Karl Fisch posted these thoughts which show how so much of the content we typically classify as foundational is becoming even more immediately available, if such a thing is possible.  If content is that at the ready, do we continue spending time trying to get students to repeat until “mastery?”

For the record, the Battle of Quebec in 1759 was the turning point in the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years War for friends across the pond).  The outcome of the war gave England control of land that sustained people who would eventually revolt and form their own country- America.  Most history teachers find this of paramount importance, and worthy to be committed to memory.  I’m willing to bet at least a few of you easily found the information using Google.

So, I’ll repeat.  How do we decide what constitutes the foundational content knowledge that every student should know without assistance?  Should there even be such a thing?

Thanks to Nathan Dainty for the Flickr image.