The premise of Engagement Theory (Greg Kearsley & Ben Shneiderman) is that students must be engaged in their work in order for effective learning to occur. The use of technology in the classroom is one of the most obvious ways to facilitate this. Attractive technologies to consider include the use of podcasts, mobile phones, internet, skype, googlemaps, email and wordprocessing to support pedagogies.
Furthermore, according to Kearsley and Shneiderman (1998), applying these digital pedagogies to 'authentic" or real life problems will provide the platform for very best learning outcomes.
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I work on Palm Island at the Bwgcolman Community School (P-9) and we have a massive problem with disengagement. In any class there are students who simply are not engaged at all. IT appears that the numbers get higher as the year level gets higher. Initially it is easy to conclude that these Aboriginal children simply do not want to have anything to do with "migaloo" (whitefella)knowledge/education.
ReplyDeleteA closer look at this problem reveals that the students who are totally disengaged from the educational process are all a number of levels (Bandscale levels) below their mainstream counterparts and below their engaged poeers in the class. The NAPLAN results for Palm Island school confirm the level of educational failutre at the school. In attempting to re-engage these "lost" students attempts have been made to reintroduce elements of a cultural curriculum and to reinstate "rich task" pedagogies but these have gotten no traction at all. The only thing that has so far been found to re-engage this group of students are computers. There is a temendous inteerest in, and sill in using computers, across the whole school. Unfortunately this year we have been brought under the OneSchool managed system and many of the activities and opportunities available to disengaged studetns in the Computer Lab have been "forceably" removed. This has led directly to a decrease in attendance by memebers of the disengaged group of students and to a rise in the incidents of unacceptable behaviour.
Hi Jimbo, your reply is very interesting. I am not aware of the 'OneSchool managed system' but it seems such a shame these students can't access the one thing that was engaging them. I actually can't believe such a thing could be allowed to happen, especially when there is evidence of success with these methods! I used to work teaching literacy to indigenous adult students in the Northern Territory and found using laptops and teaching through technogoly was a fantastic way to engage them in tasks they were otherwise uninterested in. I hope your school situation changes and allows these students to use the technology based activities again.
ReplyDeleteHi Jimbo and Carolyne,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, I agree that this situation is unfortunate, perhaps an example of administrative getting in the way of whats happening at the 'chalkface'. I too hope the situation changes to provide an opportunity for students to re-engage with their learning.
I went into JB HiFi today, at the Casuarina shopping centre in Darwin. I was looking for some interactive learning CDs for use in the indigenous classrooms where i work on Palm Island. They had little of what I was looking for but the sales girl showed my a small Nintendo DS and the "brain" games you can buy with it. To me this is the future of education!
ReplyDeleteI remembered a trainer running VET courses for trainee Aboriginal Police telling me a year or two ago that when she gave her students the use of a video IPod with the lessons on it the rate of attempts required to reach Competency dropped by 75%!
This is the hand held classroom of the future!