Amber Walraven’s Research and Teaching

All about my research and the courses I teach

Ipads in schools….about ideas, expectations and the harsh reality.

June 5, 2012 by · 4 Comments · ICT in Education, research

Ofcourse you have all heard about the promises and expectations of Ipads in education. Schools everywhere are starting pilots with Ipads, call themselves Ipadschool and have the idea things will change drastically. Publishers even talk about unique experiments with a totally Ipad-based method. It is not new to you that I stand critically towards these experiments. Not because I don’t like innovation, but because I have seen it happening so often that these experiments are done based on wrong expectations, and all too often fail to work on what really matters.  They often translate the current method and materials to the Ipad, adding some features like music and video, but they do not work on teacher roles and instructional strategy. But still, with no actual change besides the medium, schools expect higher grades, motivated students and the development of all kinds of skills…..Unrealistic expectations if you ask me….time for me to take a look in Ipadschools myself :-)  
We are currently conducting a literature review on Ipads in education (results coming up before summer I hope) and a master final project. In this post I want to talk about the preliminary results of this final project. Imke Boonen (@imkeboonen) is the student conducting this research.
The school handed out Ipads to first year students (12 year olds) this year. Their goal is to be a school with an electronic learning environment, no books and all Ipads and apps in about 5 years. Every textbook is available in pdf. Students can take the Ipad home. Teachers received a tech-course (working with the Ipad) and a didactical course. Teachers and school were not very satisfied with the didactical course. School doesn’t make using the Ipad obligatory, but hopes the innovative teachers will inspire the teachers who are a bit sceptic. Furthermore, they would like teachers to use the Ipads to not only teach content but also skills like collaboration. School is curious how teacher’s current practices differ from the ideal way to achieve this. So, our assignment: what is the most effective way to use Ipads in education, and what is the current practice of our teachers? And: how can we best bridge the gap between the two? 
A literature review concluded that to make the most out of Ipads (and to give room for all the affordances like more differentiation, more visual education, anyplace anytime, and so on), teachers should adopt a social constructivist approach. This implies a different teacher role (from instructor to coach/facilitator) and different assignments for students (more inquiry or problem-based). Armed with an observationscheme focussing on the role of the teacher, 12 teachers were observed.  And: surprise surprise….. Many teachers did not use the Ipad, and did not provide students with assignments that required them to use the Ipad in a different way then just reading the pdf of the textbook. Teachers took on the role of the instructor the most.  Even the teachers labelled by school as Ipad-experts, did not use the Ipad during the observation. Coincidence? Bad timing of observations? Perhaps… so we interviewed the teachers as well…. Results: some teachers don’t like working with the Ipad, and want to continue the way they had been working before the Ipad.  Some teachers just don’t think about switching to constructivism let alone work on collaborative skills, some teachers say children prefer reading the book in stead of on the Ipad, and leave the Ipad at  home, and some teachers say they don’t have time to really learn and work with ‘teaching with the Ipad’.
So, pretty wide gap between current and envisioned practice! 
The good news is:  if we hadn’t checked this, school would probably go on like this and would conclude after a year that the Ipads didn’t deliver their promise. And that is what often happens, because people focus on the technology, and expect technology to have magical powers. If I add an Ipad, I won’t have to change a thing, and all my problems will be solved. This is just not true! It’s about what you do with the technology, and what you want to achieve, and ADJUSTING ROLES OF STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ACCORDINGLY! 
Only then can we find out if ICT has an effect on learning, motivation,  etc. We can’t just add technology and then conclude it does or does not work. However, new roles and materials require time, effort, commitment, etc. 
So, our research gives us the change to advice the school on what could or should be changed in wich way and help them on this challenge, in order for them to start working on realizing their vision. A vision that got them to introduce Ipads in the first place :-)

P.s: And to proof my point….. What happens when teachers take time to think about what could be done with the Ipad, to reach a certain goal? They design a very cool tool where students construct knowledge with images. Teacher provides them with a storyline, students search for images and record a voiceover and edit a movie. I hope @Ipadjuf will do more of these lessons and inspire her colleagues! 

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Social mobile media learning :-) 

May 22, 2012 by · 1 Comment · ICT in Education, research, students

2 master students and a bachelor student are devoting their final projects to helping educational practice deal with mobile learning and social media. Sounds like a dime a dozen projects the praise technology in schools? Nope! We took a different approach. Just because everyone keeps yelling: ‘We need to have technology in schools, we need Bring Your Own Device, it improves learning, and it improves motivation, and children are counting on it, because technology is their lifeline!’ we said: ‘But what do we actually know to be true about these modern students and their expectations about educational technology, is it just the gadget that counts,  or can we achieve the same motivated students by  just changing location and tasks, and are students really the social mediajunkies some people say they are?’ 

So what did we do?
Literature review: There is hardly any emperical evidence in favour of 2 big claims about the ‘digital natives’. These 2 claims are: 1) digital natives have special skills when it comes to technology, communication, networking and so on and 2) digital natives have a different learning style and old fashioned school doesn’t work. They need games, ict, just-in-time but quick information and they want to share share share. So: we decided to devote a literature review on updating the Bennett, S., Maton, K. & Kervin, L. (2008) The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence- article. We’re still working on it, but results show that youth is indeed active on social networks, but more to share things with people they already know (and perhaps to make an appointment to meet face to face….), they tend to do more things more or less at the same time (and sometimes get distracted), but they lack media and information literacy skills. 
Furthermore: students do not have new learning styles, and pretty much expect to get what they’ve always gotten in school. We could say: when students do not come across new ways of teaching, do not use social media for learning, do not use technology in the classroom, they will not ask for it, and education shouldn’t bother…… However: students need to learn how to use technology, because they lack certain skills.

Literature review: Would it be possible to use social media in vocational education to improve language and math skills of students? (Levels of language and maths of these students are low, and government urged schools to increase scores. However, interventions like extra hours, remedial teaching haven’t been succesful) Based on student and social media characteristics, we conclude, social media could be a good solution to the problem….. However: we also know there are types of (social) media users (using the work of Antoine van den Beemt, we see networkers, gamers, creators for instance). What kind of users are vocational education students and what are  promoting and hindering factors to use social media in vocational education?

So what did we think? 
Does it have to start with the teacher? Should teachers say: hey, I am gonna teach these kids all I know about colonialism, but I am gonna use Twitter, and teach them about social media as well? Well, perhaps teachers should. And some teachers do! But lots of teachers are not willing to experiment, change their teaching habbits, and just have fun and play. At least: not until they know that students will at least learn the same as in the old-fashioned way. But how will we know if this is true, when we don’t try? So, it’s a vicious cycle:  kids won’t ask for new ways to learn, kids won’t learn important skills, teachers won’t try if kids don’t ask, and teachers won’t try without proof of effect on learning and motivation…..

So, it is up to us to:
1)Test to see if students are willing to use social media in school for learning
2)Test to see the difference in learning and motivation between 1) a mobile quest en 2) a normal lesson
3)Test to see the difference in motivation and learning between a mobile quest, a paper and pencil quest (everything as in mobile quest except the gadget) and a paper and pencil educational walk (not spiced up with pics and a gaming element like the 2 other versions). 

And what’s new about this?
1)Not many research on social media for learning, and if there are social media studies, they are not based in vocational education.
2+3) You often see research on mobile learning comparing the most boring classroom scenario to the coolest possible mobile quest and allow students to pay more time to the mobile scenario, resulting in higher learning….. In these cases: we decided to base a mobile quest on a normal lesson, and actually keep them as much alike as possible, or: we came up with a good mobile quest and translated that in a paper-scenario, only leaving out the gadget.

And what do we want to conclude?
1) Is social media an option to improve language and math skills in vocational education? (Based on student questionnaires about social media use in home, at school,and willingness to use it in school, interviews and observations (students, teachers, lessons).
2) Is it the technology that counts, or is it about location and tasks? Or both? 

Results are pouring in, so a follow up post will be here soon!!

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Ik heb wel eens betere dagen gehad….

May 12, 2012 by · No Comments · Daily life, students, Teaching

Diederik Samsom zei het tegen Rutte nav het niet meedoen met het Kunduz/lente akkoord. Ik zeg het nu tegen jullie en mezelf nav mijn introductiepraatje voor OWK op de Ouderdag 2012.
Groot leerpunt voor mij: niet overal ‘Ja, dat wil ik wel doen hoor.’ of ‘Komt goed’ op zeggen.  Hier een samenvatting van de gebeurtenissen die leidden tot deze ‘zwarte bladzijde’(zoals een ouder het vriendelijk verwoordde).
Ik kreeg een tijd geleden het verzoek of ik op de ouderdag een college wilde geven. Hoewel dat op een zaterdag een reis van Arnhem naar Enschede betekent, doe ik dat altijd erg graag. Praten over mijn vak vind ik nu eenmaal superleuk.
Vorige week vrijdag kreeg ik de vraag of ik ook het OWK-introductiepraatje wilde houden. Want ik kwam die dag toch en dan hoefde er niet nog een ander gevraagd te worden. Te snel heb ik toen ‘Ja hoor, wil ik ook wel doen’ gezegd. Want ik ben gewoon docent aan de opleiding, en een overzicht
geven van de studie en de aantallen studenten,  en het werkveld kan ik wel, maar is niet mijn core business :)
Afgelopen donderdag kreeg ik te horen dat het PSY intro praatje door de opleidingsdirecteur gegeven zou worden. Even slikken, want ik had verwacht dat dat ook gedaan zou worden door een docent die later nog een college zou geven…. Maar goed, ja had ik al gezegd, dus kom op! Ik had gelukkig de sheets van vorig jaar gekregen. Een set in NL, een set in Duits. Praatje kon gelukkig gewoon in NL. Ik ben iemand die liever niet vertelt wat op de slides staat, maar dat wat er staat illustreert met voorbeelden en anecdotes. Dus: ik had een beeld van de inhoud, kon daar eigen draai aan geven en zou dat klusje wel even klaren…
Zaterdagochtend 7.45 opstaan. 8.15 ontbijt. Kan dingen niet
vinden. Met name de auto: die staat op plek waar die anders nooit staat. Dus: later dan gepland weg uit Arnhem. Onderweg stijgt de bloeddduk door zondagsrijders die vergeten zijn dat het zaterdag is, en vrachtwagens die eens goed gebruik maken van het feit dat het inhaalverbod in het weekend niet geldt….
Aangekomen op de UT. 15 min te laat, en dus maar 15 minuten van te voren aanwezig. Daar wordt mij de vraag gesteld of ik de NL of Duitse sheets op het scherm wil. Eeeuh, NL, want de Duitse ouders kunnen meelezen met de aangeleverde en uitgeprinte Duitse sheets. Helaas: sheets zijn niet uitgeprint, en vorig jaar zijn er mensen weg gelopen omdat alles in het Nederlands was… of het praatje in het Duits kan. Alles in mij zegt: nee, niet doen! Ik stribbel wel lichtelijk tegen, men praat tegen me, en het enige dat ik daarvan opvang is: ‘Die ouders moeten wel een leuke dag hebben.’ ‘Vorig jaar liepen ze weg’ Het schijnt dat we afgesproken hebben dat de sheets in het Duits geprojecteerd werden, en ik gewoon in het NL mag presenteren. Met af en toe een Duitse zin. Het enige wat mijn brein nog toelaat is: ‘Duits. Presenteren. Duits’. De Waaier stroomt ondertussen helemaal vol. En dan is het zover: ik word aangekondigd. Als opleidingsdirecteur Onderwijskunde…..
Wat er dan volgt, is een drama. Waar ik zo graag had willen vertellen hoe de opleiding er uit ziet, wat ons bijzonder maakt, waar Onderwijskunde voor staat… breng ik daadwerkelijk geen enkele boodschap over. Ik stamel, ik zweet, ik blaat. (Die boemerang-vogel in Angry Birds, die keihard Blah! zegt als je hem afschiet…. die heeft meer inhoud dan mijn praatje)
Ik geef het woord over aan de opleidingsdirecteur PSY, die heel easy in het NL, met af en toe een korte Duitse samenvatting de opleiding PSY verkoopt. (Wat heb ik een respect gekregen voor de Duitse studenten die zo snel Nederlands leren lezen, schrijven en praten!)

Mijn tweet na deze ramp

Een paar uur later moet ik een college geven. Aan ouders. Die
denken dat ik een volslagen idioot ben. Maar ok dit kan ik en dit mag in het NL. College verloopt dus ook goed. (Enige vlekje: ik had mijn Twitter-volgers even moeten tippen dat ik via Twitter een vraag zou stellen over Sociale Media in het onderwijs… dan was mijn punt dat je snel antwoord krijgt op Twitter ook daadwerkelijk bevestigd :-) ) Ben blij dat ik de dag zo kan afsluiten. En diezelfde ouder die het een zwarte bladzijde noemde, zei gelukkig ook dat je ‘die er gewoon uit kan scheuren’ :-)  
Wat kon ik die doos Merci als bedankje na vandaag goed gebruiken……

Reflecting on course Integrating Technology in Schools….

April 13, 2012 by · 3 Comments · ICT in Education, students, Teaching

Next week I will end the course Integrating Technology in Schools for season 2011 – 2012. Three assignments left to be graded. With the course ending, it’s time to reflect. And since the master Educational Science will have a new curriculum from September 2012, let’s reflect on the 4 times I was involved in this course. Afterall the course in this form will not return. 
The first time, I had barely started working as an assistant professor. I co-taught the course with a colleague. Nice way of getting to know content, structure, teaching, assessing. The second year, I was on my own! I decided not to change the course (I had recently been updated, and I wanted to focus on lecturing and guiding and assessing on my own). The third year, I made some changes in the literature, assessment, and provided a different context for the schoolvisit: primary education, international school. During these 3 years, I noticed that lectures were too much about summarizing literature, the panel discussions we had were nice, but students only read the literature when they were on the panel that week, and I felt students were not challenged enough…. So, this year, I decided to make some changes… Also see a previous post. My final words in that post were: 

Yes, it is an experiment, and it can go horribly wrong. However I have so much faith in the master students choosing this course, that I am sure that together will make it a huge success!!

Well, let’s see, it was an experiment, it didn’t go horribly wrong, and it wasn’t a huge success either. 
Let me first summarize the student evaluations that came to my ears and eyes. I had a talk with some students and 4 (out of 13) students filled out the faculty course evaluation questionnaire. Score: 7.3
Remarks in general (focusing on things mentioned that could be improved, there were of course also strong points mentioned  :-) )
The study load was not spread well over the course and more guidance needed on the knowledge base. Lot of time spend on that, too little time for the actual assignment. Therefore: school visit should be earlier in the course. 

Before I react and give my evaluation, some explanation: course is about providing an advice to a school on how they can integrate technology. I arrange a schoolvisit, and before we visit the school, students write a wiki together. They read and explore literature, summarize, combine, compare, criticize. This is the knowledge base. This is the information we need to prepare our schoolvisit. And this is the backbone of our advice report. Based on what we know from our knowledge base about integrating technology in schools, we know what to look for and ask during the visit, and we can write a report that is based on research, knowledge and observations and not on intuition. 
The  writing a wiki together was new, and was the big experiment….

Okay, my reaction to student remarks: moving the school visit: disagree. The school visit is after the lectures because you need some idea of what to look for, and what to ask. Without background knowledge, you may not get the information you need and may need to go to the school several times (not only annoying for students, but for school and teachers as well….) In the current form, we prepare as a group, we visit as a group, and it costs school one morning or afternoon. I do agree that time between school visit and handing in report is short. However, by writing the wiki, you have read the literature, we discussed the literature together, you have an idea of important things to pay attention  to when integrating technology and some good and bad practices. And based on that, you know what to look for during the schoolvisit, know which questions to ask and can choose a focal point for your advice. Writing the advice should, because of this all, not take an extraordinary amount of time. However, students follow more courses then this one, so indeed, we could give more time between visit and report date. 
About more guidance needed on writing the wiki….mixed feelings about that. I chose the wiki, because I wanted students to engage in the topic, dive more into it, discuss it, criticize it more,  compared to previous years where they only read when they were in the panel. I hoped a wiki would do the trick. But because it was the first time I tried this, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I started by dividing the students between topics, and gave them some articles. I asked them to summarize these articles, and find more articles. Summaries were put on the wiki. During the lectures students presented the most important issues in the literature surrounding their topic. In this way, everyone was up to date about what was on the wiki. After the presentations, I tried to connect the topics, by asking questions about differences or similarities between the topics. I pointed out what I thought could be another viewpoint on the topics. On the wiki I wrote questions like: how does this article relate to the article on this topic? What do you think is best? Start with content, or start with technology? I wanted students to go beyond summarizing. Writing a wiki also involves making connections, changing/deleting/adding to things others have written. I didn’t achieve this. Perhaps I expected too much of students, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough, perhaps they didn’t see my remarks in the wiki. Perhaps I had too little time to make the most of this course….(although I wrote 2 blogposts during the course which I shared with students: here and here. Too bad there were no reactions to these posts…..)  Was I wrong to assume that this was a form of guidance? That with these posts, and my questions and comments during lectures, and on the wiki, students could go on? If I assumed wrong, yes, then I should have provided more guidance. But when I (and I did that repeatedly) asked if students had difficulties or questions, there was little response.
Students told me writing the wiki was difficult, they had never done that before. They were used to getting assignments that were smaller, perhaps easier, and at least more familiar. In the long list of thnigs to do, my course came last…. Because, there was no real necessity to write the wiki, and I hadn’t said they had to post a minimum of 3 times. They suggested I should do that, to make them not forget about posting. Did I overestimate them? Yes I think I did. I blame myself for that. Should have thought more about the things I shout out on Twitter and (in a less black-white kind of way) in my articles: there are some skills we forget to train, because we think students already posses them…. We assume that just beause they grew up online, the know how to write a wiki….. And: our educational system is too focused on testing and way too little (if any…) attention is being paid to important skills like critical thinking, problem solving, information search and evaluation. In fact: our system turn our children and students in to uninspired followers. It makes them forget about what motivates them, why they are at university at all and about the importance of their own voice. So, perhaps I should have anticipated more, and should have adjusted my guidance accordingly… 
 Does that mean I will never try this again? No. But I hope students come accross similar assignments more often. If we keep taking them by the hand….what will become of them when we send them in the real world? 

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My thoughts on the #Ipadschool

April 1, 2012 by · No Comments · ICT in Education

After my 2 posts on Ipads, I owe it to myself, this blog and ‘the world’ ;-) to write a post on the hottest educational item on Twitter since the cutbacks on inclusion education in the Netherlands: the Ipadschool. I made a bet with Casper Hulshof from Utrecht University (yes, the Ipad-uni  :-) ) that I will not use a specific word. Let me know if, based on this post, you know which word :-)

Friday March 23th, I read a short post on a news site that there were plans to start a new school. The Steve Jobs school. ‘A new type of school should be started that is centered around the existence of the Ipad’ was the first sentence of the newsitem. My first tweet when I read this (many would follow, but I am not going to repeat them all :-) , just check @amberwalraven on Twitter :-) ) was: ’Please, let an educational scientist be involved!’ 
And after the official pressconference, a website and a manifest by the initiators, several items in newspapers, and a huge Twitter discussion with main initiator  (which will soon be continued  in person… ) I still stand by this first reaction.
I am not against change, and I don’t want to wait before we researched everything. I agree with the initiators that more attention should be given to the digital era that will be ahead of us. Students need to be prepared for the future, and dealing with ict is very important. A few reasons I heard to start this school were: ‘My daughter is 3 and plays with an Ipad every day’ ‘We got a digiboard, a very big Ipad, and it made all the difference’ ‘An Ipad is very intuitive and is the best way for small children to learn’ ‘If children use it at home, school can’t afford to ignore it.’ Lots of critics wrote reactions, mentioning a vendor lock in, suggested LEGOschools, talked about vision, curriculum, TPACK,  it is never a good thing to put technology first, and build a school around a certain technology, and mentioned the fundamental difference between home and school.  Lots of people also reacted very positive: it’s about time, schools need to innovate, this is the future, finally someone with guts, it’s exactly what I have been saying all along!
I think I am a mix of both groups, a critic and someone willing to innovate schools.

+  Uptake ICT in schools is slow, not only ICT to learn, but also learning to use ICT. Change in current schools is difficult, due to all sorts of issues, so a real big change could perhaps best be realized by starting a completely new school. 
- When one wants to change a school, it is not a good idea to start with technology, and focus everything around it. 
+ ICT can make learning effective, engaging, adaptive and so on
- Whether ICT is effective, engaging and adaptive is not up to the technology, but on how technology is used and embedded. An app is an app, and only becomes educational when combined with learning goals and context.
+ A classroom setting with tables
in rows facing a black- or interactive whiteboard, doesn’t stimulate learner centered education and enforces teaching for the majority, excluding the low and high achievers.
- Even if the setting is in small groups, 24 hours access to the virtual school, and students get to choose how and when to learn, it is still school. School doesn’t always
have to be fun. Building a
complete educational system just because children like to play with the Ipad is not a good idea. Using the Ipad to learn differs from playing around with it and apparantly develop some skills and some knowledge along the way. Furthermore by focussing on the children who like to play with the Ipad, you forget that most children do not have problems with having school
be school.

I could go on for hours. I won’t :-) At least not here :-)  

It is not the first time people have tried to change the system, it is
not the first time technology has been pushed into schools. However, previous attempts have not been succesful. Mostly because not all bases were covered. Not everything was thought through. It started and stopped with pushing the technology or one main idea like ‘children need to be able to choose how they want to learn’. Luckily, in the past years, educational scientists haven’t been standing still as well. Sure, we don’t know everything yet, but we know the biggest promoting and hindering factors with regard to ICT in education. Now, it seems time to put our knowledge to the test, and seize the opportunity the innitiators gave use by generating a mediahype around this project. I am an educational scientist who is not entirely pro and not completely against, and sees this as a good opportunity to help education move forward and to strengthen the field of educational science at the same time.

I hope that just as the critics acknowledge the pro’s of this plan, the initiators will acknowledge the views of the critics. If we all remain on our own side of the playing field, the match is no fun for all of us. 

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