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Footloose! (Released to the web May 6, 2007) Readingtonparents.org has joined parents and taxpayers in our township in being critical of technology spending in our school district—spending which is often seen as over-the-top and careless. If giant corporate style internet connections, teacher laptops and Smart Boards don’t meet our definition of worthy expenditures, are there other avenues we could be exploring which would use technology to infuse new life into our curriculum at a cost we can sustain? Happily, there is. In this article we will look at two avenues where technology and real progress and learning can meet. A dreadful 1980s movie called Footloose told the story of a city boy who moved to a country town and discovered that rock music and dancing had been banned there by a town ordinance. In this corny tale, a bible-thumping minister and other adults had put the kibosh on all the kid’s fun, leaving room for the unfolding tale of teenage rebellion. As goofy as the movie was, it does hold a pearl of wisdom for us, namely that engaging children on their own level, with their own interests, is the pivot point between growth and decay in development. When adults clamp down on the natural interests of children we set the stage for frustration and conflict. Let’s look at two technology based initiatives which can be used—and which are being used—to engage children on their own level while promoting advancement. DDR When Linda M. Carson, professor at West Virginia University’s School of Physical Education and director of the state’s Motor Development Center, walked by a video arcade and saw children there sweating, out of breath, and jockeying for position on one of the games, she had an idea. The game was an arcade version of Dance Dance Revolution, which was first introduced in Japan in 1998. Today the game is available for many different gaming and computing platforms. Essentially the game boils down to the player stepping on arrows (forward, back left and right) on a floor mat as the game prompts the player for each move in coordination with music. The intensity of the workout is on par with that of a treadmill or Stairmaster in a gym. It can be played as a single player game or in various forms of competition. Here’s the trick: kids absolutely love it. Even kids who are not known for their coordination or love of sports enjoy the game. Ironically, Readington has already experimented with DDR, and many parents have noted that their children comment about how they can’t wait for gym class and hope that they get to play DDR again. Professor Carson saw the same positive results, which lead to the installation of the game in 185 middle schools in West Virginia, with plans to install the game in all of the state’s public schools. The benefits of this game for fighting obesity and other harmful health issues, for encouraging participation in physical activity, for teaching coordination and encouraging specific brain development, for engaging kids who are otherwise fearful of competitive sport, and for bringing interest back to PE classes all hinge on the fact that kids find DDR fun. Parents outside of Readington also report very positive results from DDR in schools, and press reports speculate that nationwide 1500 school districts will have DDR in place by 2010. Professor Carson and a collaborator in a multi-year study found that there are specific health benefits like improved blood pressure, increased overall fitness and improved endothelial function for overweight children who played the game regularly. The cost of DDR varies widely, depending on the platform being used and the sturdiness of the floor mats. The arcade versions cost many thousands of dollars, but the versions used by schools which run on common gaming platforms, combined with a higher quality floor mat designed for constant use, can be purchased for $800-1000. Two or three units are enough for a gym class. The floor mats themselves will need replacement from time to time. DDR could also be used to augment other areas outside of PE classes. With Readington’s recent controversy over reduced recess time, DDR might be a means to provide indoor exercise for those who desperately need it. Competitions or team demonstrations could easily be organized to build camaraderie and build more interest. DDR is an example of a technology that can provide benefits not otherwise available while at the same time engaging children on their own level. Plus, the cost is a fraction of providing some other technologies with little or no track records. Since Readington already has piloted this technology successfully, one wonders why we are not forging ahead in this area. Student Blogging School districts all over the country are struggling with the meaning of the internet in the lives of children. The schizophrenic response of educators has been to condemn the use of internet tools like blogs and photo/video/music sharing websites when used by children for their own ends, but to blindly encourage the use of search engines and other websites when used for class assignments. It probably isn’t an overstatement to say that most adults in positions of school leadership haven’t the first clue about the current state of the net or the real possibilities for its use. Like the adults in the movie Footloose, our school leaders react to something they don’t understand with a zero-tolerance iron fist. They clamp down on the very real misuse of blogs and sharing websites out of concerns of bullying and similar issues, but they ignore the teachable moment to engage children in a dialog about fairness and ethics. They rail against students using their own written word on a website to express their own opinions on their own time; ignoring the teachable moment to engage students in an effort to improve communication, accuracy and quality. The educators cannot see past their own experience. Well, not all educators. Some have, indeed, discovered that internet tools can be harnessed to provide an experience for students which is forward-looking without ignoring the constructive principles of human communication we would all hope to instill in our children. The word “blog” is derived from “web logs.” Blogs are personalized but public diaries published on the web and they reflect the interests of the authors. Some are widely read and very influential, others are obscure. This form of micro-publishing has become popular because it allows writers to share their work quickly and inexpensively, without the concern about readership paying for the work. Bloggers write about politics, about careers, about their neighborhood, about education, and about almost anything crossing their mind. Blogging has become so high profile and so critical to the dissemination of information in certain areas that there is now a debate about blogging ethics which mirrors the issues faced by newspapers over a century ago. Given the importance of blogging and the popularity of the tool to the younger generation, some educators aim to piggyback on the phenomena to teach the writer’s craft, to teach about ethics and fairness, to teach about political and scientific debate, to teach about peer-review, and much more. Jeremy Williams wrote in a 2004 issue of Australasian Journal of Educational Technology: “Students have long learned as much from each other as they have from an instructor or a textbook - it's just a question of finding an appropriate vehicle for facilitating this learning...blogs have the potential, at least, to be a truly transformational technology in that they provide students with a high level of autonomy while simultaneously providing opportunity for greater interaction with peers.” He was discussing the use of blogs in higher education, but three years later some educators are seeing his point for students much younger. Locally, at Hunterdon Central Regional HS, it is reported that ten percent of teachers have worked blogging into their lesson plans. Middle school teachers in other parts of the country are also working blogs into their classroom activities, using them for encouraging writing, for creating electronic student portfolios, for posting results from experiments and team projects, and for giving students and outlet to express their own ideas and work. There are rules about content, of course, but that is part of another valuable learning process about ethics and fairness. In Readington there has been a recent move to require teachers to post information on their own page on the School Wires based website, but that experiment has already shown its limitations. First, the configuration of the website does not allow for recurring entries. Second, the vast majority of teachers haven’t the faintest idea what they are doing nor do they have any interest. Third, the pages have nothing to do with students participating in the process. Some have erroneously described these efforts as blogs, when, in fact, they are just static pages with occasional or no updates. What could we be doing better in Readington and how much would it cost? Some ideas include:
How could these things be accomplished and how much would it cost? Certainly the participation of teachers and parents in reviewing content before it is posted is necessary. Such a thing forces adults to pay more attention, however, and that is not a bad thing. Blogs can be created in numerous ways, from utilizing free blogging sites already available on the web, to creating school-hosted linux servers using free software or software of minimal cost. Blogs can be open to the entire net, or they can be made available only within the school network or only to those with a password on the net. Using free blogging sites on the internet will mostly allow for wide open availability. Some are intended for use by students and can be password-protected. If parents are wary of an open approach, low-cost servers could be set up in the school using free linux operating systems and open-source blogging software which could be limited to a school intra-net or to access from the outside via password protected links. The physical network infrastructure to support blogging is absolutely minimal and would have zero impact on the bandwidth already installed in the district. The PCs already in place in the school and at home are perfectly sufficient. Finding outside volunteers to assist in this process from Hunterdon Central students or from parents and area businesses is certainly possible. Once blogging software is selected, the children can teach the teachers how to use it! After all, the children are already using similar software at home. We need not teach the students how to use blogging software any more than we need to teach them how to use video games or to watch TV. They already get it. They can help the teachers learn to use it, and the creation of that two-way street isn’t a bad thing either. What if we had a tool which could stimulate student interest in writing, in sharing ideas, in finding comfort in diversity, and in sorting fact from fiction and the only drawback is that the adults need to pay attention to the process after setting it in motion? Like the professor who noticed DDR in a video arcade, educators need to open their eyes and see what is possible. Our children are using blogging and sharing sites anyway. We can ignore that fact or try to wrestle the tools away from them, or we can pounce on the teachable moment and use technology the way it should be used—to do something we couldn’t do before, and to do it better, more efficiently and less expensively. Everybody cut footloose...
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