Volume 7, Number 1

In this issue:

From the Director:
Standards-Based Education in Minnesota

Local Systemic Change Initiatives in Science and Mathematics

Educational Technology: A Valuable Support for Standards-based Science and Math Education Reform

Technology in the Mathematics Classroom: Helping Students Make Connections

Museums: They're Not Just for Field Trips Anymore

CAREI > Research/Practice Newsletter

Educational Technology: A Valuable Support for Standards-based Science and Math Education Reform

Sara Dexter, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Minnesota

New science and math curriculum developed over the last 10 years has brought with it new curriculum standards, learner outcomes and a whole new way of viewing exemplary science and math teaching. Many of these successful projects demonstrate ways technology can enhance teaching and learning. With such exciting projects it is possible to be blinded by the glare off of so many computer screens - the tendency could even be to think of the technology as the primary cause of these results. There is danger in this. When the role of technology in education reform is overemphasized, it is usually at the expense of the contributions of the standards and curriculum projects, and the learning process teachers engage in when they begin to use these materials in their instruction.

As they learn about new ideas during this implementation phase, teachers think deeply about their classroom instruction. Teachers learn from the process of adapting new curriculum and adjusting classroom instruction to reflect the reforms inherent in the curriculum. As teachers look for ways to support learning through technology, they may grow in their own knowledge and in their ability to help students use the full potential of the technology in the learning process. Using technology in the context of curricular goals not only initiates decision-making necessary to effectively use technology, it connects those decisions to larger goals. Embedding technology use within larger instructional goals increases the likelihood of technology successfully aiding learning. It ensures congruency with a teacher's day to day work and initiates the technical and pedagogical support they will need for implementation.

Two concepts which help embed effective technology use into standards-based education are "mindtool" and "mindware." Mindtool is a term coined by Jonassen (1996). This metaphor conveys the use of technology as a tool to support students working with subject area content. This is in contradiction to learning from a computer, or about it. Mindware is a term coined by Perkins (1995) to describe what he refers to as learnable intelligence; these are the strategies, attitudes, or habits that support higher-order thinking in a subject area.

Mindtool

Jonassen (1996) describes mindtools as computer applications "that require students to think in meaningful ways in order to use the applications to represent what they know (p. 3)." His mindtool metaphor is premised on the idea that the use of the tool requires learners to organize and represent their knowledge in a new way. This new representation is achieved through thinking critically or creatively about the information. Because learners must provide the content to be used with for the mindtool and decide how to arrange it within the mindtool, they are forced to be more active in their knowledge construction.

It is through the teacher's instructional design work that computer applications become mindtools in a classroom. Student assignments determine whether or not a mindtool supports construction of knowledge through critical or creative thought, not the mere presence of the computer software. Curriculum standards also play an important role. For example, the rigorous content standards developed in science and math over the last ten years set the tone for the level of student work. When these standards are combined with real-life applications and performance assessment, they provide the important foundation from which to design interesting, authentic, and challenging assignments. Technology can help support that design.

Science and math teachers already know the capabilities of many software programs. Software supports student work in areas such as compiling graphs; sorting and ordering information through databases, tables or lists; drawing images or graphic organizers; creating webs or mindmaps; simulating natural phenomenon; and editing and revising word processed documents. But in order to use these tools to make meaning from data, students must be taught how the software can support their thinking and, through the assignment they are given, find a need to use it in this fashion. This stands in sharp contrast to merely using the software's capabilities only at the end of a project to make the work more neat and tidy.

A spreadsheet used as a mindtool might aid students in categorizing, analyzing, calculating, and presenting skills by creating a spreadsheet, selecting the formulas to apply and the best graphing formats to display their work. For example, students could compile data on wind direction and speed from different towns and then apply formulas to calculate averages and variance to find patterns in the data. Compare this to a non-mindtool use of spreadsheet: students add numbers manually and then enter them into the rows and columns of the spreadsheet. In this case the spreadsheet is simply an organizer to provide neat display of the information.

A database used as a mindtool could compare, contrast, and categorize information as students set up the fields and layouts of the database and then construct queries (searches). For example, after students consider the data they will collect in their survey about community members' recycling habits, they then design the fields of the database and layouts they need to best allow them to search through and display data. Once constructed, the questions the students want to answer become the basis of the queries they construct and run. In contrast, a less mindtool-like use of a database might have students simply consolidating information about planets from tables in different books into one database. In this case, not having students design the fields of the database means they would think less about the nature of and relationships among the data. But, with carefully constructed questions the database could still serve as a support to thinking critically about the information within it.

Multimedia authoring tools (such as HyperStudio, Linkway, or Digital Chisel) can be mindtools when they stimulate students' creative and critical thought through the analysis and synthesis required for an effective multimedia product. For example, imagine the thinking required to design the layout , choose their topic and research the content. The mindtool-ness, and the thinking required of students, decreases if the teacher instead allows the use of a common template in which to compile the research findings.

These examples of mindtools show how commonly available software can be used to help students be critical and creative thinkers. Note that the use of technology does not automatically make it a more thoughtful assignment. Rather, thought-provoking assignments and mindtool-like uses of computers result from the instructional design skills of the teacher. This outcome is more likely when the basis of a teacher's instructional design includes rigorous content standards, a desire to make assignments authentic, an assessment method that includes performance assessment, and the mindtool metaphor.

Mindware

Mindware is the strategies, attitudes, or habits that support intelligent behavior. The mindware concept frames intelligence as reflective, and mutable. This contrasts the more traditional view of intelligence as innate, or context specific and the result of experience (Perkins, 1989, 1991, 1995).

Mindware:

• allows us to effectively support our thinking by guiding and recording our thoughts for additional refinement;
• relies upon metacognition (being aware of and monitoring our own thinking processes) so that we organize and direct our thinking in useful ways; and
• requires that we receive modeling and instruction in thinking strategies, and the attitudes or habits which support them (such as persistence and seeking accuracy), and talk about their use.

In a science or math classroom, the mindware necessary to support the use of mindtools might borrow from the media/library sciences, a language arts curriculum, scientific methods or problem solving strategies. The habits and traits needed to successfully use technology to access, process, and communicate come from a range of areas and students may already receive some instruction in them. However, to aid the transfer of mindware to new content areas, students must see it modeled and then discuss how the it may need to be adapted for a different context.

Mindware needed when accessing information

Success in the information age requires not only that we are able to digitally access information but that we are critical and effective thinkers when we do so. Knowing how to ask for information through search engines such as CD-ROMS and the Internet, and then how to select the best sources demands learners have several mindware strategies.

For example, students using the WWW to look up information on "Greenhouse Effect", could just type that in to a search engine and, as I did, get over 5,000 "hits." They might only look at the first 10 or so and hope they were indeed the best sources of information. This illustrates how technology does not automatically extend students access to quality information because the best sources of information may not turn up first on the list. To teach a student to efficiently access the most relevant sources of information requires the student have a search strategy in mind. Students should also be able to generate a variety of keywords to use, and know how to recognize clues on web pages that indicate the validity of the source.

Here is an example of a strategy a student can use to help identify the most relevant descriptors with which to work in a search engine (Stripling, 1988). The strategy is simple; the student answers a series of questions about the subject they want to search:

1. Another way to spell it or say it.
2. A larger subject that might include yours.
3. A smaller topic that might be worth looking up.
4. Another subject your topic may overlap.
5. Any dates, locations, or specific names related to your topic.
6. For famous person: where and when did he or she live? What is he or she famous for?
7. What subject or discipline is your topic a part of?

After students locate sources of information, they must use their mindware (i.e. apply a strategy) to determine the reliability and authority of the information. For example, they could validate the quality and appropriateness of information by applying the strategy of scanning for the author's name and credentials, the date of publication, the publisher, and the number and type of references provided.

It is important to point out that the effectiveness of this search strategy depends upon both content area knowledge and technology skills. Simply knowing the strategy does not provide answers to these questions, nor does mere access to the Internet. Content area knowledge, mindware, and technology have to work in combination in order to aid student learning.

Mindware needed when processing information

Success with standards-based science and math curriculum in the information age also requires that our learners are able to critically and effectively process the information they access. Reading comprehension skills are the basis of effective information processing. Reading students must be able to employ critical thinking skills to resolve points of disagreement between authors and analyze information for bias and opinion. They must use metacognitive processes so that they review their understanding of information in light of prior knowledge and revise their schema accordingly. They must also recognize how information technologies themselves can help them to process information.

For example, being an effective analyst requires you possess knowledge of what you are looking for and that you employ a systematic search process. This means that students must be taught about bias, fact, opinion, and propaganda in its various forms; they must also learn what makes information reliable as well as a general search pattern for it.

Beyer (1987) suggests this simple search pattern for analyzing information:

1. Identify the purpose of your analysis.
2. Determine the clues, or evidence, you will look for to accomplish the purpose of this analysis.
3. Search the data piece by piece, or line by line to find these clues or evidence.
4. Identify any pattern of relationships among the data, clues, or evidence.
5. State the results of your analysis, providing evidence to support your results.

In addition, a number of specific analysis patterns have been developed for validation of World Wide Web sources. Several can be found at: Evaluating published resources, from Widener University/Wolfgram Memorial Library, Widener University, Chester, PA. Compiled by: J. Alexander & M. Tate: July 1996.  Additional sources which articulate how to teach thinking skills are the Dimensions of Learning materials (e.g. see Marzano & Pickering, 1997) and Barry Beyer's work (1997, 1998).

Mindware needed when communicating information

The math and science standards emphasize that our learners are able to effectively communicate what they have learned. This emphasis increases the authenticity of students' work by emphasizing their need for an audience. It underscores the belief that by using information to create a product a student can demonstrate mastery of content (i.e. performance assessment). Of all the benefits technology offers to students this one is probably the most obvious to teachers. Many teachers already ask for a HyperStudio stack or a PowerPoint presentation as a way to demonstrate what students have learned during their study of a topic.

I assert, however, that simply teaching students the operation of the software and allowing them time to create a product is a far cry from using a mindtool to create an effective non-linear multimedia report or provide a bullet point research summary. Just as we do not teach students cursive writing and assume they can write an effective paragraph, we must not simply teach students how to create fancy, brightly colored slides and call it effective communication because now it is digital. Students' communication skills must be in accordance with their requirement to use computer software as a mindtool.

For example, construction of a multimedia document or a web page with hypertext requires students to have a firm grasp of their main and subordinate ideas. Effective hypertext design uses these natural divisions to allow readers to branch off to pursue information of greater and lessor interest to them. Multimedia production also begs that students have a firm grasp on design principles and the use images or sound to supplement communication. Students producing communications with digital sources of information also need a clear understanding of plagiarism and copyright. None of these are innate skills. They must be taught. They must become part of the mindware students can draw upon when using mindtools to communicate curriculum content.

Effective communication has always been a primary outcome of the language and visual arts curriculum areas. Current curriculum already teachs outlining skills, paragraph construction, and creating and interpreting visual images. Science and math teachers who are enthusiastic for the positive impact mindtools can make on teaching and learning must look across the curriculum to learn what mindware students already learn and what must still be taught. Science and math curriculum standards help us to identify the procedural knowledge most important in these content areas. In order for students to think of them as strategies and skills to draw upon while using mindtools in their science and math classes, mindware must be presented as a model. Students need time to practice and internalize this procedural knowledge.

Conclusion

Remembering the teacher's role as the designer of classroom instruction helps us to see how standards-based curriculum reform, mindtools, and mindware can be coordinated. The math and science curriculum standards articulate key declarative and procedural knowledge. They have also set the stage for using performance assessments as one way to capture and encourage authentic student work. But it is the teacher's day to day instructional planning which brings those elements together for education reform. The concepts I have introduced here, mindtools and mindware, are offered as ways to help teachers think about technology use during their instructional planning. Together, mindtools and mindware frame how technology can be a support to students as they use thinking strategies to critically and creatively examine subject area content. Mindtools helps us to define effective use of technology; mindware can be a checkpoint during a teacher's instructional design process. We want technology to support effective instruction and not to let the hardware and software itself become the focus. Yet, even as I argue that technology use should be considered a part of planning for curriculum, instruction, and assessment, I must also point out that it is a special case. It is a challenging task to get the hardware and infrastructure purchased, installed, and set-up; not to mention selecting the appropriate software and devising training for it. In many schools and districts this is being done with few, if any, extra staff members. To be successful requires strong leadership and vision for both the technical aspects of this work and the pedagogical aspects. The integration of technology into instruction as teachers also implement standards-based educational reform is a complex process. It is essential that we focus on integrating technology, not simply using it, so it becomes a meaningful support for the teaching and learning processes. The concepts of mindtools and mindware can assist in achieving this goal by focusing our attention on the instruction design process and one of its core components, curriculum standards.

References

Beyer, B. (1987). Practical strategies for the teaching of thinking. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Beyer, B. (1988). Developing a thinking skills program. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Jonassen, D. (1996). Computers in the classroom: Mindtools for critical thinking. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill.

Marzano, R. J. & Pickering, D.J. (1997). Dimensions of learning, teacher's manual (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Perkins, D. (August, 1989). Mindware: The new science of learnable intelligence. Paper presented at Fourth International Conference on Thinking, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Perkins, D. (1991). Mindware and the metacurriculum. In D. Dickinson (Ed.) Creating the future: Perspectives on educational change. Seattle, WA: New Horizons for Leaning.

Perkins, D. (1995). Outsmarting IQ: The emerging science of learnable intelligence. NY: Free Press.

Stripling, B. & Pitts, J. (1988). Brainstorms and Blueprints: Teaching library research as a thinking process. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.