“Instant access to knowledge and to each other has changed the nature of community and the speed of work, life, and, most importantly, thought. Time for reflection and interaction is a casualty of the digital age, and one of the primary goals of higher education should be to reclaim this time. The paradox is that the same technology that glues us to flat screens can also be the primary tool for reclaiming this lost time for human interaction. The ability to reach our students wherever they are means that we can extend the classroom and hence the conversation; we can recreate the ideal of students discussing Plato in the dining hall, but virtually.”
Jose Antonio Bowen, page 27-28
Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning
Jossey-Bass 2012
A Conversation Starter
I thought it would be fun to share some quotes from books available in our PDP library as a regular feature in our Joyful Tidings emails.
If this quote intrigues you and you would like to check out the book, drop me an email, text, or call and I will send it along via the magic of campus mail. I am hoping these shared quotes will also function as conversation starters.
If this quote inspires some thoughts or reactions you wish to share, you have three pretty cool potential starting points:
1) just reply to this email (privately please — too many reply alls will get me in big trouble!) and I will engage you in spirited dialogue, or
2) you can visit our new PDP blog, Joyful Teaching, and comment on this post there. (If you spend some time thinking about and commenting on this quote, you can record that as a flex activity via the pre-approved activities option…just saying…)
3) You can start a “hallway” conversation with a fellow member of our college community (do not worry about achieving a Platonic ideal here — even a sardonic complaint about this email is a good start!). Indeed, it need not be in a hallway at all…
The quote from Bowen is fun not only because it raises questions about the nature of community and its relationship to technology but also because it challenges us to consider the equally pressing issue of whether or not students discussing Plato in the dining hall was or ever has been an ideal 🙂
”Is this the ideal hamburger or a pale reflection of that ideal? Am I seeing it in the light of day or do I eat this burger in the recesses of a cave, bottles of ketchup shimmering on walls made blurry by their ever shifting place on the florescent light spectrum…”
Ok, I better stop before I get a long email from my friend Louisa Moon justly and sagaciously illuminating the 3000 ways I have disfigured Plato’s allegory of the cave.
Honesty Check:
How many of you are feeling a bit angry now about the bait and switch of my email title? “He said naked teaching! I see no nudity whatsoever in this email.”
In other news…
24 days until flex week!
You can find the PDF version of the schedule on our PDP web page or the more detailed workshop info in myflex.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Kelly Hagen, our previous PDP coordinator who is now on vacation somewhere spectacular and would be simply delighted to field your questions.
I will happily provide Kelly Hagen’s cell phone to anyone who promises to point out typos in a myflex workshop description in a detailed text or email.
Thanks,
Prepostero
Prince of Pedagogical Playfulness (P3)
aka The Artist Formerly Known as Gym Sullivan
PDP Coordinator
PS. I do not really have Kelly Hagen’s cell phone number. Would anyone in their right mind give me their cell phone number?
I wanted to share two comments I received in response to this email:
!) Alketa Wojcik
So, yesterday I was reading this thread on facebook on how technology in the classroom is not helping our kids and how it is better for them to write notes and not use a laptop to remember the facts (I promise I don’t get my educational news from facebook, I also read The Chronicle every morning and Inside Higher Ed J). I don’t get into discussions and reasoning in facebook but the idea of your quote below came to mind when I read the threads yesterday. Is it that technology is not helping the students in the classroom or is it because we don’t know how to use the technology to reach the students? If you are seeing the computer as a thing to only take notes, then yes of course it can also be used as a distraction for the kids (frankly, why do you have to handwrite the facts to remember them better when you can google it in 2 seconds). Technology is here to stay so it is great to have discussions on how to best use it as an educational tool inside and outside the classroom. I had to use it last night at 11:30pm when my daughter asked a random question on a topic that I had no idea how to answer it. Not sure whether she cared to know about tsetse flies in Africa or it was another tactic of hers to avoid falling asleep but once I googled it, she had to learn the facts whether she wanted or not J. I am sure the book below addresses technology in a deeper meaning tthan Wikipedia and google though.
2) Mark Stramaglia
I’ll be teaching my first Computer Science class this fall (Java Programming), and I am struck by the irony of contemplating a reduction in the use of technology to improve learning in a course on creating technology. But, the wheels are already turning and I’m thinking about how we might occasionally engage in learning activities that intentionally don’t use technology for the purpose of enhancing those times that we are actively building programming skills.
Mark, I love that you’re willing to consider the interplay of technology use and, dare I say, avoidance in a computer science class. At the moment, it makes me think about the usefulness of following the energy in a room when I’m teaching. When people are learning, there’s an energy created as they investigate ideas. That might help me to assess which kinds of learning activities are working, regardless of content.
I second Denise: that’s so meta. 🙂
Having been doubly called out on this — once by Jim and a second time by Alketa, who cites my Facebook post — I feel I should respond. Way back in the 1990s I attended a session at the American Philosophical Association where the presenter said, “In the 80s, the computer changed the way we write; in the 90s, it is changing the way we read.” When I was in college, in the early 80s, if I typed the wrong letter, I had to think of a word that made sense in the sentence I was writing that began with that letter! Then, word processing came along, and there was, indeed, a slow revolution in the way people write. Not only could you now correct a typo, you could correct, move, delete, insert . . . whole paragraphs. The creative process was forever altered. In the 90s, with the ubiquity of the web, people began to read, follow hyperlinks, read some more, watch a video, look at photos, . . . never returning to the original source. Philosophers worried that this was the end of philosophical discourse, as it requires that you follow the intricate details of an in-depth argument. Clicking around can give you more information, although some of it is unverified information, but philosophical discourse isn’t about information.
I’ve been experimenting with my students keeping a notebook. I give them a composition book at the beginning of class, and in that composition book they take notes on the class session, the textbook readings, and my online lectures, as well as in-class and homework short essays I have them write on topics like “What is the difference between appearance and reality?” or “Name a belief you once had that has changed? Why did you believe it originally? When did it change? How and why did it change? How strongly do you hold this new belief?” I start by showing my students the research on how taking notes by hand increases memory and depth of understanding, while students who take notes on a computer tend to type verbatim without processing and distilling the central messages in a lecture. It turns out that typing notes tends to turn into a passive process of taking dictation, while writing notes by hand is an active process of deciding what to write where, according to one’s understanding.
In the Facebook post, I cited an article that showed that students who have a laptop in class spend the majority of the class time on non-classroom activity (e.g. social media), and receive lower grades as a result. Students who manage to stay on task, despite the presence of a laptop, don’t get better grades as a result. Thus, the added technology is frequently detrimental, and never beneficial. It reminded me of an article I read about a literature professor who found that he could write while at home, but for reading he needed to get on the NY subway and ride all day, or he would soon be too distracted to read. I’ve found this myself, as I sit here next to the biography of Alan Turing of which I’ve read a small percentage.
Certainly, in the 00s the computer has changed the way we talk to each other. In the 10s is it changing the way we listen?
Louisa, I must ask – what do you have them do with the notebooks? Do you seem them or are they private? I’d love to try this!
I allow them to use the notebook on their essay tests. It’s the only thing I allow them to use on the test. I collect the notebook along with the exam and grade it. I also collect it in a few weeks in to see what level of notes students are taking.
Louisa, I loved your post. In my face to face class, my srudents also have a notebook that I considered a journal, where they keep all their classroom writings, but also some reflections about their learning of a foreign language.
Can you share any articles you have about the advantages of hand-writing?
I used to research on contemporary bilingual writers who needed to use their handwriting as a way to compose…
I use this article because it’s from Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/
Hi Cristina,
I find this article quite interesting. I usually share it with my students in order to encourage them to practice their writing by hand, a strategy that helps them in their learning of a foreign language.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html
I love the decade-based analysis here. It helps to think about the types of changes that technology, writ-large, has delivered to our ways of learning or avoiding learning. I’ve often said that had I started by PhD before the computer, I might not have accomplished it because of the lack of revision I used to do with a typewriter.
I’m warmed to know I’m not the only person who reads less than they want to because of the distractions that technology encourages me to embrace. I recently turned off most of my notifications on my phone which is helping me take control of my free-time choices again. I embrace getting off the grid and worry about those who don’t.
I love that you’re asking students to hand-write thoughtful material. The speed of that transaction changes the thinking. It may lead to less revision, but it focuses the mind in ways we’ve been letting go of.
Yes! Speed!
Sometimes I try to imagine what it was like to write–to think!–when writing was so laborious and paper cost as much as your horse.
I’ve read similar studies. Paraphrasing is essentially explaining something to yourself, so it automatically leads to greater understanding and internalizing of concepts. Copying is a mechanical process many animals can do (elephants, for one.)
Having said that, and though I take notes longhand still, I appreciate that it might be easier for some people (untrained in cursive, which basically everyone under 35 is) to type.
Here’s what I’m afraid of, in an anecdote: Last semester I asked my students to talk about how they *personally* decided whether a source of information was reliable or not. Why would they trust or not trust information from their friend/hairdresser/mechanic/mayor? I gave them a few minutes to talk, in small groups…and instead of thinking and talking, they Googled it.
They asked Google to tell them what they thought.
That for me was a the-apocalypse-is-imminent moment.