EDU236X Beyond Bits and Atoms
Reflection Paper 01 : What's The Big Idea?
I was taken aback initially when I read Papert’s paper, “What is the big idea?”. In one fell swoop, he dismissed all the learning theories that I have held close to my heart.
Regarding constructivism, using Michael – a student he had worked closely with – as an example, he said, “But being made to “discover” what someone else (and someone you may not even like) wants you to discover (and already knows!) is not Michael’s idea of an exciting intellectual adventure.”
About discovery learning, he claims, “Jean Piaget’s very strong idea that all learning takes place by discovery is emasculated by its translation into the common practice known in schools as “discovery learning.” It is disempowered in part because discovery stops being discovery when it is orchestrated to happen on the preset agenda of a curriculum but also in large part because the ideas being learned are disempowered.”
With reference to situated learning, he dismisses, “The same double whammy is present when the excellent and potentially powerful intention, that knowledge is situated, turns into presenting manipulations of fractions in the guise of “real world” situations such as shopping at the supermarket.”
And in summary, he says of these contemporary movements of school reform, “I applaud and share their intentions, but shall suggest here that in practice these would-be reform movements have allowed themselves to be assimilated to School’s ways of thinking.”
With my senses aroused, and my interest piqued, I began then to ask myself, “What then is HIS big idea? What is the big deal with constructionism and what Papert was advocating? What is the big difference?”
1. The big idea is IDEAS!
2. EXPERIENCE : Ideas have to be experienced as powerful in their use. (Papert suggests that this can be done by using the idea “to solve a real problem that had come directly out of a personal project.”)
3. RELEVANCE : Ideas have to be used in direct connection with other situations in the world
4. CONSTRUCTION : Ideas have to be progressively constructed in children, and should arise from intuitive knowledge the child has internalized over a long period.
5. Constructionist use of technology empowers children to discover, construct and apply ideas.
Even though this is a reaction paper about the Big Idea in use of technology in education, technology only comes in at Point 5. Because the Big Idea is NOT technology – the Big Idea is Ideas. Technology is just a very powerful and ubiquitous tool to empower children for “idea work”. It was ironic to note that advocates of Papert’s “Mindstorms” movement began to claim that the use of Logo itself would help children. His big idea also became “disempowered”. I found it rather amusing to note that Papert’s notion of constructionist use of technology suffered the same fate as the so-called “contemporary movements of school reform”. Papert’s Big Idea also got derailed, disempowered and distorted on its way to this nebulous, mysterious entity called School.
The solution to this is not to stand afar off and shake our heads at what School is doing to Big Ideas. Neither is it then to develop a list of ways in which technology can be used for idea work in the classroom, and dish these out to teachers as a “Teachers’ Guide” – we would then be guilty of the very things we are faulting School with … disempowerment. I like what Papert suggested at the end of the paper – the solution is to bring this kind of Idea Work to teachers themselves. To let teachers experience the affordances of technology (note the focus on affordances, rather than actual technologies themselves – hence it may not necessarily be Logo!), and to let them construct their ideas of how technology can empower children in THEIR classroom. And once they discover their big ideas, may they also exclaim like what Debbie did about Fractions, “Technology is everywhere! You can put technology on anything!!” After all, the Big Idea IS ideas!
And isn’t this also precisely how this course (ED236X) was constructed?