Since their introduction six years ago, teachers mostly have asked me how Tablet PCs or another research program about their use will make any difference in education.
In general, these questions address schooling, instruction, and classroom management. My responses try to return the focus to how people learn with Tablet PCs in and out of schools and irrespective of instruction and classroom events.
Here’s a sample of these questions and my responses. I cast them in terms of questions likely during a Q&A session after proposing a research agenda to describe how people learn with Tablet PCs during a WIPTE panel in a couple of weeks.
I’d appreciate your comments, suggestions for additions, and corrections. I want to represent questions fairly and accurately.
Q: In the great scheme of things in education today, why should anyone spend time and other resources on research about learning with Tablet PCs? First, they’re just an expensive additional cost to already limited school budgets. Second, teachers already have too many things to do without learning to use them in classrooms.
A: Schooling exists to make learning easier and faster than just through each person’s trial-and-error. Some educators have reported ways of using Tablets to increase student learning. This research program gives priority to clarifying learning principles people use to complete school lessons, especially with Tablets. We want to describe more about how those increases occur, so other learners may also earn gains.
Q: What do you mean this research examines the way learners acquire new information and skills with Tablet PCs? What’s so special about Tablets and what you call their cousins as compared with cell phones, clickers, and other mobile devices?
A: Tablet PCs have all the features of notebook and laptop computers. In addition, users can write on their screens, convert handwriting to text font, convert text to speech, compose and play music scores, and more. This combination gives them the most comprehensive set of features of any of the mobile PCs and devices.
Q: This proposed research misses the point: 21st Century education relies on solving problems through teamwork, collaboration and cooperation. This project relies on old ideas about individuals reciting what others know. Old ideas will not compete in a global world of rapid communications and knowledge growth in the 21st Century.
A: The proposed research agenda uses state-of-the-art technologies to give priority to describing objectively how people learn with Tablets, one of the most comprehensive communication tools available. It leaves instructional methods, learning content, political interpretations, and categorizations of uses of this learning to others.
Q: Teachers have a complicated, difficult job meeting their own expectations of students as well as expectations imposed by others. How will one more research program fix that situation?
A: This research will add transparency and metrics to generic aspects of learning that all people use with and without Tablets. In addition, it will clarify ways learners use these principles with Tablets to complete academic assignments. Teachers may use these metrics and clarification to adjust their lessons to match student learning practices, and thus increase student learning rates.
Q: Teachers already know what to do and have enough watchdogs monitoring their activities. What’s in it for teachers for Tablets to do what you want? Why not put all that money and effort directly into helping teachers do what they know how to do?
A: This research gives priority to describing how people learn, the one necessary purpose for teachers to exist as a special part of the teaching-learning equation. We think that teachers want to give priority to student learning, and will continue to use information from this and other research agendas to increase that learning promptly as much as possible.
Q: What does the word learning mean in this research agenda?
A: Learning in this agenda means reducing the number of trial-and-error behavior patterns to near a 1.0 ratio. This agenda uses the operational definition of learning as what a person does that a Tablet can record while the person uses a Tablet to manage a new problem successfully.
Q: What do learning principles have to do with collaborative and cooperative learning?
A: Learning principles describe what people do when they learn. These principles apply whenever anyone tries to adapt to (manages) a problem. For more than 100 years, behavioral scientist have described some of these principles and documented ranges of confidence to have in them under certain conditions. This research agenda describes which principles learners use with Tablets.
Q: No agreement exists about ways to define learning rates. How do you define learning rates and why should teachers care about them in addition to everything else they must consider?
A: This agenda uses learning rates as ratios between trials, errors, and meeting learning criterion to solve an unresolved problem. Teachers consistently, implicitly estimate student learning rates when they plan how much information and skill building to include in lessons, lectures, and laboratory exercises. This research agenda will clarify ways teachers may increase learning efficiency (among other things, reduce the number of trials and errors), and thus increase the amount a student learns in that same block of time. The program will also identify ways besides time to calculate learning rates.
Those who analyze learning have used rates to report their observations for almost 100 years. Teachers who hold certificates from accredited teacher preparation programs know about these reports and the extent to which agreement exists about learning rates, sometimes called achievement and intelligence scores.
What do you think? What changes should I make so your questions are included?
Workshop on the Impact of Pen-Based Technology on Education (WIPTE)
This post elaborates the post Research Qs 4.1 and 4.0 about learner views of learning with Tablets.
One of the great points that Clay Shirky makes in his book, Here Come Everybody, is that computers have allowed people the benefit of taking larger risks because the cost of failure is so low. In the past, the cost of putting an idea out there for people to read or try or buy has been so expensive that little projects (big risks) have been cost prohibitive. However, with the advent of computers and especially personal hand-held devices, those costs are so low (if not free–Blogger), that the cost of risk is nothing. For education, and as an English teacher, I would love to have students writing and publishing to an audience, sharing their stories and ideas. The cost to do this is relatively low. The risk is high–will they like my writing–but the cost of the risk is low. I love this low cost paradigm shift to how we think and share ideas. It allows us to risk and learn. After all, it is only through risks, and failures, and eventual success that we learn. For example, I wrote a blog about being a stay-at-home dad. The effectiveness of writing that blog with all of the free tools that Blogger provided was swift. However, the endeavor did not result in any major traffic so I scrapped it. I learned from it and applied that knowledge to my other blogs. Had I not had the benefit of hand-held and computer low cost, I would likely have not published an article, let alone found someone who would publish it.
I like the paradigm shift to lower cost risks also. I like your cost risk thinking. Guess I should read Shirky’s book. I’ve avoided it, but perhaps at risking some useful wisdom. Thanks for pointing to it. I’ll keep your ideas in mind as I edit the FAQ. More later.