Let’s get together, yeah yeah yeah
Think of all that we could sha-are
Let’s get together everyday
Every way and everywhere
And though we haven’t got a lot
We could be sharin’ all we’ve got
Together
~Haley Mills, From Walt Disney’s The Parent Trap
The public school classroom is a sacred community. How students socialize in school will be how they interact with each other as adults. Online learning drastically changes classroom dynamics. Students miss important humanization and learning skills when schools focus too heavily on technology.
Personalized learning, the way it is defined and set up, where students work mostly alone online, is an anti-socialization experiment that could haunt us for years to come.
Schools which emphasize personalized learning are realizing a gap is created when it comes to student communication. See Ed. Week’s “Sometimes Personalized Learning Feels Impersonal.”
Technology has much to offer, but it should not replace real teachers and classroom dynamics. Technology is a tool.
NPR’s recent personalized learning piece “The Future of Learning: Well It’s Personal” alludes to how tech shortchanges students.
In the report, Jade Davis an expert in emerging technologies in education, and the director of digital project management at Columbia University Libraries says:
I think of kids with machines that have algorithms attached to them that move them through learning at the pace where the student is. It’s going to sort students. It’s going to stereotype, put up roadblocks and make assumptions about how students should be thinking. In other words, what’s sold as “personalization” can actually become dehumanizing. Teachers, I point out, can and do show biases as well. But teachers can attempt to remedy their bias … teachers are learners in the space, too, but software is not.
Here’s what’s lost when students forfeit schooling for nonstop online learning.
Student Feedback
Students miss face-to-face interactions with peers. They mostly work alone at their skill level.
In traditional classes, students contribute their personal experiences to class discussions. They get to express themselves. Through storytelling, students acquire better language skills. Guided by teachers, student experiences become part of the class experience.
It’s like show-and-tell when students are young. Contributing to class interchanges makes learning interesting. We remember subject matter better when it’s connected to stories.
Socialization
Class dynamics bring students and teachers together. Classroom communications help students understand differences that make us human. Students learn what makes a school and society work.
Students like to socialize in school. It’s part of the school experience. It motivates some to attend school! Students feel engaged when included in class discussions.
Good teachers help quiet students find their voice, and they teach overzealous students to learn to be polite and listen.
Auditory Feedback
Listening skills are critical. Many students learn by listening.
Hearing about the information reinforces what students will remember about the topic. I am an auditory learner, and class discussions always helped me remember the information.
Students who lose out on classroom dynamics, won’t learn about their classmates.
Discipline
Rules guide classroom dynamics. Students learn politeness and respectfulness.
When should they interrupt? How do they interject their thoughts into the conversation appropriately?
Young children learn to take turns. They develop patience. Learning how to respond to other children teaches self-regulating social skills.
Students learn to listen and respect others, even if they disagree. Sometimes there’s respectful debate.
Students express their feelings, and they get positive or negative feedback. They learn other opinions exist.
Special Education
Students need opportunities to be included in class discussions so they can emotionally connect with their peers. They won’t get that sitting alone on a computer.
Students learn to respect the differences that make us all unique.
Understanding differences and learning to appreciate each other is what makes a well-run inclusion class so important.
Diversity
Good class dynamics help students learn tolerance and to be respectful of those who are different than themselves.
Personalized learning avoids this necessary communication.
Communication
Personalized learning might provide students with opportunities to connect with students around the world. Gaining access to many people through social media is exciting and a good thing about digital learning.
But real communication happens face-to-face. We will never reach a point where knowing people in person and communicating in real time will be better replaced by screen associations.
Now more than ever, we need to foster the interpersonal relationships between students, so that they feel socially connected learning together. That happens best through class dynamics.
I agree with you completely, Nancy. While technology can foster engaged learning as a group if directed by the teacher for that purpose, digital modules that adapt to individual students’ pace and progress are antithetical to deep learning, in my view. Another serious drawback to digital/adaptive learning is that there is no provision for students to ask questions–for clarification or curiosity. What does this teach subliminally? Remember Marshall McLuhan–the medium is the message.
Excellent points, Sheila. Children are like pigeons pecking until they get the right answer. I always appreciate your comments. Thank you.
You are right Nancy, but as well as making schools nasty and unpleasant, de-socialised instruction causes harm to deep learning and cognitive development.
In terms of the facilitation of deep learning, curiosity is the essential fundamental cognitive urge. I characterise curiosity-driven ‘deep learning’ as that which builds ascending levels of cognitive sophistication (Piagetian plastic intelligence) as distinct from the ‘training’ that can be achieved through passive study, instruction and memorisation on the behaviourist learning model.
Vygotsky took the view that just as language learning is a social process for which talking and conversation are fundamental necessities, the same is true of all deep learning. Here are some of his thoughts.
“The true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual.
By giving our students practice in talking with others, we give them frames for thinking on their own.
Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (inter-psychological) and then inside the child (intra-psychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.
Through others we become ourselves.
What children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense even more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone.
The child begins to perceive the world not only through his [or her] eyes but also through his [or her] speech.
Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them”.
So ‘machine learning’, which isolates students from conversation and debate with their peers cuts off the tap that feeds cognitive development.
Read more here
https://rogertitcombelearningmatters.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/the-learning-instinct/
Thank you, Roger. You listed my favorite child developmental specialists! You’re also right about the harm the loss of interactions mean for children.
You also mentioned SLANT. I think that might have originally been a learning strategy for students with learning disabilities. I have never understood why it would be used for students without attention difficulties.
.
I wrote this blog post 2 1/2 years ago. Things are worse now.
https://resseger.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/story-telling-species/
Thank you for this, Sheila. It covers a lot about why digital learning misses it. And isn’t it stunning how Coleman’s statement summed up this movement.