T561 Oct 26 -- Biologica

Ok, I'll admit this up front -- I haven't looked at the actual simulation yet-- something about extra walking on a bum knee that made me pass out and miss lab last Monday-- arrugh.....!

Now to the article: I like the concept of hypermodel-- it sounds like what any educational exercise should be -- interconnected and relatable (to each) other souces of information in a variety of media. A good podcast should be this, as should a webpage, no?

As for the simulation itself, I'm not so sure. I love the concept of doing genetic crosses with dragons. My mother would have loved this too.

The article makes me wanna holler. Why?

For one thing, the authors come across as incredibly educationally naive. Translation: ain't ever taught in a classroom with a bunch of kids. Take this from page 5 "Without formal accountibility we have found, students tend to ignore both the question and the answer." ...!... No duh folks -- that's the nature of direct instruction -- directing focus until the organism (that would be the 17 year old who has other, probably better, things to think about) can do it for themselves. This direct modelling is why face to face instruction is a good thing.'


Here's another p. 13 "We found that students often took unpredictable actions that our original specifications did not adequately address." Hmmmm, human unpredictability, creativity, general humanness.... Ok, one the things that happens in the classroom (or what Chris Dede would call "research design") is that through experience and interaction, the teacher discovers what the kids are likely to do and then plans for it -- ! And, though years of experience, then builds in plans for the usual reaction from the start of the lesson planning process... Clearly this is a beta-model, and therefore not a rich experience base... But I also have the feeling that the folks in charge of this simulation think like computer programmers/science geeks, and don't have that teaching data base of behavior,

Here's another to hammer home that point: "We considered time on task, but found that criterion to be a reliable indicator only in carefully controlled situations." (p. 14). Well, yeah. Just showing up and goofing around with the program and then fogetting to log out before walking away is something college students would do (hey, I live with college students....),

Ok, I like the potential of this program. Especially the small grain size of data collection, the creative recombinations of the material, and the general principle of actually learning by doing.

I have two critiques here.

One, the authors assessment makes the needs of the program to have feedback sounds like bad/limited ITS (intelligent tutporing systems) because the feedback is so limited.

Two, the authors, like several we have read so far (try that big consortium piece from last week), are too focused on the tech aspect, and forgetting about the human element-- that is, if they understood the human element, in all of its emotional, relational buggy-ness to begin with....