Prologue: Wearing Ruby Slippers
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"
David Foster Wallace
Opening Story for His Graduation Commencement Address
Kenyon College, 2005
Opening Story for His Graduation Commencement Address
Kenyon College, 2005
This collection of information and resources for professional educators is titled Ruby Slippers, Black Holes, and Using Technology to Improve Education. This collection is used as the primary notes for my (Greg Sherman's) graduate technology courses in Radford University's School of Teacher Education and Leadership. The prologue to this collection serves the primary function of communicating a conceptual "Big Picture" for all my technology courses regarding how I believe technology might be used to improve education and the role educators play in facilitating worthwhile learning experiences.
Worthwhile learning experiences.
This is perhaps the underlying theme to everything presented within these pages. As you will no doubt observe in my writing, I believe many schools, teachers and administrators in America are failing in the most fundamental ways, most notably by failing to ensure that students are immersed in experiences that provide meaning and purpose to skills, knowledge and attitudes that are worth learning. I see this in nearly every classroom I visit in southwest Virginia, and I have seen this in classrooms throughout America in my work as a science teacher consultant with the National Science Teachers Association. I describe more about my education and experiences, along with the other sources of my biases, on the About the Author page. You really should spend some time reading about me because by biases are plentiful, and they help make more sense of the information, examples, stories, and strategies presented and recommended within these pages.
But let's move on with this important introduction by examining some important questions related to the information at the top of this page:
Worthwhile learning experiences.
This is perhaps the underlying theme to everything presented within these pages. As you will no doubt observe in my writing, I believe many schools, teachers and administrators in America are failing in the most fundamental ways, most notably by failing to ensure that students are immersed in experiences that provide meaning and purpose to skills, knowledge and attitudes that are worth learning. I see this in nearly every classroom I visit in southwest Virginia, and I have seen this in classrooms throughout America in my work as a science teacher consultant with the National Science Teachers Association. I describe more about my education and experiences, along with the other sources of my biases, on the About the Author page. You really should spend some time reading about me because by biases are plentiful, and they help make more sense of the information, examples, stories, and strategies presented and recommended within these pages.
But let's move on with this important introduction by examining some important questions related to the information at the top of this page:
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I'll start with the goldfish picture. This picture is presented because it illustrates what many of you should be experiencing in you own intellectual lives right now. Graduate school is a time to start opening up your mind to new ideas, new personal and professional possibilities, and new experiences. It is a time to question your assumptions, make observations, doubt your previous education, and refine your own intellectual identity based on scientific thinking. I use the term "scientific thinking" purposefully here because most of you are earning a Master of Science graduate degree. Have you ever stopped to consider why it is a science degree and not an arts degree (Master of Arts)? There is meaning in this, and it suggests your graduate coursework and experiences are designed to facilitate scientific thinking skills. These include research, theory, investigating alternate viewpoints and hypotheses, and perhaps most importantly, doubt.
Doubting an assertion is the best way to find an error in it. You must assume it is untrue if you want to find its weakness. The truer it seems, the harder you have to doubt it. Non credo ut intelligam: in order to understand what's wrong, I must doubt. (Elbow, 1998, p. 148)
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Believe it or not, one important expectation teachers have of their graduate students is to doubt. Doubt the text, doubt the readings, doubt the lectures. As Elbow (1998) alludes, doubting leads to analysis, which can lead to the identification of weaknesses and limitations in ideas, concepts, strategies, perspectives. Such mental processing can lead to intellectual growth and development, which constitute the primary purpose of participating in graduate studies. We are encouraging you to move to a bigger bowl.
And this leads to the second question above: Why the fish quote from David Foster Wallace? This is the opening story that Wallace provides in a commencement address he gave to the Kenyon College's graduating class of 2005. The simple story illustrates the main message that Wallace presents in his speech, and I think it can also be used to better understand the underlying reasons why too many professional educators cannot see how technology should be used to improve their practice. To better understand the meaning of this story in relation to Wallace's overall message (and better understand its inclusion in this course), please do yourself the favor of listening to his entire commencement address below. It is about twenty minutes in length, so it might be best to pour yourself a refreshing beverage and get comfortable before you click the play button below.
And this leads to the second question above: Why the fish quote from David Foster Wallace? This is the opening story that Wallace provides in a commencement address he gave to the Kenyon College's graduating class of 2005. The simple story illustrates the main message that Wallace presents in his speech, and I think it can also be used to better understand the underlying reasons why too many professional educators cannot see how technology should be used to improve their practice. To better understand the meaning of this story in relation to Wallace's overall message (and better understand its inclusion in this course), please do yourself the favor of listening to his entire commencement address below. It is about twenty minutes in length, so it might be best to pour yourself a refreshing beverage and get comfortable before you click the play button below.
In his speech, Wallace asserts that "...the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in [college] isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about." He goes on to detail the many ways in which this is a very obvious conclusion about what it means to think, but like many things in life it is often the obvious that is overlooked. I cannot tell you how important this habit of the mind really is, and how important it is for you as an education graduate student to keep this at the forefront of your mind as you process the skills, knowledge and attitudes facilitated within your classes. Because I believe that the only way education in general, in America, is going to improve, is if teachers and administrators start choosing to think about things that really matter, that are really important, that are really worthwhile.
And improving the practice of teaching is precisely what this collection of resources is designed to support.
Which brings us to the third question: Why Wearing Ruby Slippers? This is actually related to Wallace's message about water and fish and choosing what to think about. If you recall, in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum, 1900), Dorothy learned at the end of the story that she had the power to get back home all along, at any time. The power was in the shoes on her feet (which, incidentally, were silver in the original story...not ruby red). The power was right in front of her. I like using this analogy for the roles I believe technology can play in helping teachers improve their practice. I believe the best way to use technology in teaching is to use it in the way it is generally used in life outside the classroom.
Hopefully, the strategies presented within this collection of resources will seem very obvious. They should, because they reflect ways in which people tend to use technology in the real world, everyday. The "Big Picture" graphic below presents an overview of the four categories of strategies presented in this collection. The most comprehensive and complex category of strategies are included within the INSTRUCTION section. Most of these strategies, like the category itself, are simple and....obvious. Likewise, the strategies included in the COMMUNITY-BUILDING category are obvious because they represent ways in which using technology to build community are used in the real world. The MANAGEMENT strategies also reflect common ways people use technology to organize and control the multitude of processes and resources needed to accomplish complex projects. And finally, the RESEARCH, EVALUATION and PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT category provides strategies for using technology to study, assess and continually improve education professional practice in the manner that most professionals now use networked computer resources.
And improving the practice of teaching is precisely what this collection of resources is designed to support.
Which brings us to the third question: Why Wearing Ruby Slippers? This is actually related to Wallace's message about water and fish and choosing what to think about. If you recall, in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum, 1900), Dorothy learned at the end of the story that she had the power to get back home all along, at any time. The power was in the shoes on her feet (which, incidentally, were silver in the original story...not ruby red). The power was right in front of her. I like using this analogy for the roles I believe technology can play in helping teachers improve their practice. I believe the best way to use technology in teaching is to use it in the way it is generally used in life outside the classroom.
Hopefully, the strategies presented within this collection of resources will seem very obvious. They should, because they reflect ways in which people tend to use technology in the real world, everyday. The "Big Picture" graphic below presents an overview of the four categories of strategies presented in this collection. The most comprehensive and complex category of strategies are included within the INSTRUCTION section. Most of these strategies, like the category itself, are simple and....obvious. Likewise, the strategies included in the COMMUNITY-BUILDING category are obvious because they represent ways in which using technology to build community are used in the real world. The MANAGEMENT strategies also reflect common ways people use technology to organize and control the multitude of processes and resources needed to accomplish complex projects. And finally, the RESEARCH, EVALUATION and PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT category provides strategies for using technology to study, assess and continually improve education professional practice in the manner that most professionals now use networked computer resources.
Soon, I will use the space below to provide a more comprehensive overview of educational technology as a field of education. In the meantime, Derek Muller provides an excellent overview of technology's promise, or lack of, in transforming education: