In many ways, the ed establishment is just now “discovering” that low-tech is better for learning. This means, in many cases, the old way of doing things in the classroom gets better results than the new.
We reported about plants in an office making workers more productive and asked whether the same principles might apply to classrooms. Well, of course they do! Research from the University of California, Los Angeles, confirms earlier studies that say too many distractions in the classroom, homework area, with or without advanced technology, make anything that is learned fade more quickly than instruction delivered in context and in a low-tech way.
Evidence is also mounting from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s BLOSSOMS Project, which features lessons that are accessed from all over the world. It gives us pause about the “personalized” or computer-based learning techniques that have become popular in the last decade. (As you can see in our “About” page, with parts written 12 years ago, we never jumped on the high-tech bandwagon. It’s a way for some companies to make money, not to teach kids.)
For example, MIT’s BLOSSOMS program (the acronym stands for Blended Learning Open Source Science Or Math Studies) features about 100 lessons in science and mathematics that are not:
- student-centric
- individually paced
- BYOD (works on any device)
The success of the BLOSSOMS program is a stark reminder that more technology doesn’t always mean better learning on the part of students. In fact, for me even to suggest BLOSSOMS might be onto something “is blasphemy in view of the hardening orthodoxy of the ed tech establishment,” writes Annie Murphy Paul on the Hechinger Report.
But, “all this is perfectly aligned with what research in psychology and cognitive science tells us about how students learn. We know that students do not make optimal choices when directing their own learning; especially when they’re new to a subject, they need guidance from an experienced teacher. We know that students do not learn deeply or lastingly when they have a world of distractions at their fingertips. And we know that students learn best not as isolated units but as part of a socially connected group.”
For example, BLOSSOMS has one lesson using mathematical models that teaches students about epidemiology. It “intersperses video segments explaining how infectious diseases are spread and controlled with role-playing exercises in which students see for themselves (via classmates who don red, green, or blue-colored hats) how taking preventive measures reduces the risk of contracting illness.”
Now that’s learning something. Sure, it’s aligned a little to the Common Core—mathematical modeling is a huge part of the Common Core. But it’s research-based learning that lasts for kids, since they’ll never forget their classmates wearing those silly hats.
That is, keep the distractions to a minimum by avoiding “devices” and teach in context, just exactly how kids learn and remember what they learned. The proliferation of devices has been one of my biggest complaints about sites like the Khan Academy. They are perfect for explaining concepts. If you need to know how to find the hypotenuse of a right triangle, Sal Khan has some great lectures on video you can watch at your own pace.
But you’d remember it better if you sawed a yardstick (with full safety, of course) and made a right triangle with your friends in class. That’s BLOSSOMS in a nutshell—some technology but no “high-tech” required—and it works.
