Educating the Dragon

Well I have to say I have begun to share longer written pieces under Articles in the sidebar. I’d just like to note that I realise that ‘Articles’ is a plural even though there is but one available for your view. My first piece begins:

"In January 2006, Peterhead School became part of the ‘Champion Schools Programme’ fostered by Sitech Systems. As part of this initiative the author was given an assortment of technology; an interactive whiteboard, a sound system, and the classroom response system called PRS. Professional development sessions focused the author’s attention on the use of PRS to address the Key Competency, Thinking Skills. This paper will critically discuss the potential of a classroom response system (CRS) to develop children’s thinking skills, and in particular higher order thinking."

Read on…

A little reading around my assignment:

 Rochelle J. (2003)Keynote paper: Unlocking the learning value of wireless mobile devices Journal of Computer Assisted Learning , 19, 260-272

It’s section on the classroom response System has been most helpful in broadening my understanding and questioning its use.

In the paper Rochelle(2003)  discusses the use of a variety of wireless mobile technologies (WMT). Graphic calculators are presented as a success story in this regard. It is identified that ‘in literature today’ all WMTs fall into the category of tool. Rochelle identifies three major WMTs which have had the ‘most prolonged research attention’; classroom response systems, participatory simulations and collaborative data gathering.

The portion of the paper that interests me is classroom response systems as I present on the topic and continue to experiment with this technology within my classroom. However, before I discuss that section of the paper two issues arose regarding the introduction.

Firstly, what is meant by ‘in literature today’ no examples are referenced, should they be? I would expect to see such a comment with support examples. Where can we go to substantiate such a claim?

Secondly, having researched classroom response systems(CRS) it troubles me that they appear under the title of : most prolonged research attention. The reality is that such research is very sketchy, widely dispersed, narrowly focused on Classtalk Rowan-Paul, J. (2004). and dominated in the tertiary sector. Perhaps it is appropriately headed, but it is far for extensive considering the length of time such a technology has been around.- Classtalk began in 1985 (http://www.bedu.com/) 

Rochelle argues the case for CRS. Sighting research by
Davis, (2003) Dufurse et al (1996) and Owen et al (2004) pointing towards a significant, powerful shift in the classroom climate. But perhaps the most significant change is with the teacher/ educator, It would be so easy to apply questioning to the knowledge element (Bloom 1956) and leave it as a classroom motivation tool with little or no impact on levels of learning. It is only by the focused attention and specific engagement the teacher has with such software that allows for students to use such technology to broaden and deepen knowledge as identified by  Bereiter, C.,  & Scardamalia, M. (1998).

References

Bereiter, C.,  & Scardamalia, M. (1998) Beyond Bloom’s Taxonomy: Rethinking knowledge for the knowledge age”. In A Hargreaves et.al (Eds), International handbook of educational change-part two.
Dordrecht: Kluwar Academic Publishers, pp 675-92

Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). (1956) Taxonomy of educational objectives :Handbook 1. Cognitive domain.
New York: David McKay Company, Inc.

Dufresne, R J. ,. Gerace, W J. Leonard, W J, Mestre J P.and  Wenk, L. (1996) Classtalk: A Classroom Communication Systemfor Active Learning Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 7, 3-47,  

Rowan-Paul, J. (2004). ICT and higher order thinking skills: What do teachers think? Computers in New Zealand Schools, 16 (2), 30-34 

Rochelle J. (2003) Keynote paper: Unlocking the learning value of wireless mobile devices Journal of Computer Assisted Learning , 19, 260-272