So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about technology and learning.  There’s so much in the news about MOOCs, using iPads, schools using technology, etc.  I am even part of a pilot program at my school right now where all of my students have iPads in my honors geometry class and we are trying to communicate at night using Voicethread and the iPads.  My hope was that having a way to share ideas during the evening would lessen the stress of homework problems that students are asked to grapple with in the PBL curriculum would give them more opportunities to throw out problem-solving ideas with each other before class starts so that we would spend less time in class debating different methods of solving the problem (although that’s what I love about class, right?).

But I’m asked as a teacher to find ways to integrate technology into my classroom – but to what end?  I want to find ways to use technology to solve problems, to explore ideas and to help improve students’ understanding of the mathematics.  Not necessarily help them communicate with each other, which is what I’m finding most of the apps out there are for right now – which I am open to – but they are removing a huge part of the learning triangle.  In fact, David Hawkins (1974) wrote about the I-thou-it reciprocal relationships in learning that simply must exist between the learner, the teacher and the subject matter.  He said that if one of the relationships is hindered or dysfunctional in some way, that learning is not optimal.

So if I interrupt that relational triangle between the students’ communication with the material (and with each other) and with me, using technology instead of discussion and the connection with all three, my fear is that learning is not optimal.  Perhaps the technology could enhance it, but for now I see that it is not truly happening.  My guess is that it has to take time for the students maybe to want for that to happen.

I also just read an article on Edutopia by a guy named Matt Levinson that was entitled “Where MOOCs Miss the Mark: The Student-Teacher Relationship” where it was stated that a lack of mentorship, close guidance or meaningful relationship between teachers and students is what is really lacking in these online courses. Even students who use Khan Academy lectures for “learning” sometimes comment that even though they don’t like sitting and listening to lectures in math class, they would “much [prefer] listening to her math teacher explain the same concepts because she likes this teacher and feels comfortable asking questions and going for extra help outside of class.”

Carol Rodgers (one of my most favorite people on earth) writes about teacher presence and the importance of it in the classroom.  I believe in mathematics class and especially the problem-based mathematics class it is truly essential because in order for students to take a risk with a method, they need to feel supported and safe in order to be open to new ideas and to discuss them with others.  With the open presence of a teacher and mentor, students are not “receiving knowledge” but creating it with others – creating it within those relationships that Hawkins was talking about – maybe with technology or without it.  But  for someone who just spent two years writing about the importance of relational pedagogy in PBL, I find it extremely difficult to assume that without those relationship the same exceptional amount of learning would go on.