An Antidote to Boring

In "A Dialectic Analysis of Generativity: Issues of Network-Supported Design in Mathematics and Science," Stroup, Ares, and Hurford argue that math and science education are often taught in a fashion that removes them from their social context (and that, in turn, network-supported designs can work toward restoring that integration). Stroup et. al. are more focused on the local social environment of the classroom than the broader social, cultural, and, indeed, emotional contexts that give math and science education meaning.

But I think it is important to consider how these contexts could also be integrated into network-based STEM education. We are human beings, and while there will always be some people who delight in the formal perfection of purely mathematical proofs, for many other students, such activities will elicit only a shrug. I recall emerging from my high school's program of biology, chemistry, and physics with the impression that science was the process of demonstrating that things that seemed like they ought to be interesting (How does the world work?) were actually very boring (via lots of equations, like F=ma, which tell you absolutely nothing about your personal experience, because they have been simplified from the more complex forms for which you don't know the math. Here are some problem sets.)

But mathematical and scientific ideas don't simply pop out of the ether: they emerge from long histories of experiment and discovery, and often are tied to profound philosophical questions. For example, recently some members of our class played an Edheads game called "Deep Brain Stimulation." The game approached the process of brain surgery as a primarily physical challenge, and yet there are important questions to be asked here about why we might want to mess with our brains, and what risks we take in so doing. To me, this game would have been far more involving had it fleshed out the character of the patient, Ellen, whose profession entailed distinct medical needs. The game could have played with the varied impacts that different medical approaches might have taken on Ellen's life, letting us see the potential real-life outcomes of an oral treatment versus a surgery with side effects, etc; (or even more vividly, a different version of this game might have let us freely explore different areas of the brain and illustrated how switching sections on and off would affect a patient's behavior and life). Such an approach would have lent more emotional heft to the game.

An example of a science education tool that, on the contrary, makes wonderful use of context is WNYC's Radiolab Podcast. To take one of many great examples, their series on time, "Time" and "Beyond Time," tackles abstract concepts like relativity while addressing head-on the questions these concepts arouse for human beings--what does it mean if every moment is a fixed entity that somehow exists forever? What about free will? Or parallel universes that arise every time a decision is made? For many students, the chance to ask these types of questions will make math and science concepts more involving, and appropriate use of network-supported designs can help deepen these debates.

Where Games Meet Real Life

Many people are attracted to online games like World of Warcraft because they offer an escape from the real world. Online worlds offer cooler places to explore, more immediate gratification, the opportunity to switch identities, and so on. Researchers like Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown have pointed out that this makes learning new skills and overcoming in-game challenges feel like "fun," instead of "work." The idea that virtual worlds can serve as effective learning environments is a compelling one.

But what about problems of transfer? The motivations that drive us to play a game or to solve real-world problems are often quite different. For example, in a game like Sim City 2, I can wreak endless havoc on the little universe I've created, secure in the knowledge that none of this is "real." By contrast, I am motivated to work on real-world problems because I understand that the consequences of my decisions will be very real indeed. By immersing students in realistic game environments, do we run the risk of making real-world challenges seem less interesting or relevant? Games are so rewarding, so easy by contrast to many of the monumental problems we face in reality. In a game scenario, I can work out a way to force the nations of the world to sign a universal peace treaty. Accomplishing this in real life is quite a bit harder.

In her TED talk on gaming for a better world, Jane McGonigal from the Institute for the Future discusses the idea of harnessing the energy and passion many people bring to games to solving these real-world problems. Her group has worked on games like World Without Oil and Evoke, which stress the genuine nature of the problems players face, encourage them to make changes in the way they actually live, and offer, in some cases, real rewards (Evoke players can earn travel scholarships and even seed funding for new ventures). The game world and the real world are not sharply differentiated. Instead, this is a hybrid model, where what begins as a game starts to infiltrate the player's real life in powerful ways. While these models aren't perfect, I think this kind of experience--part game, part real-world undertaking--will be what is needed to make games meaningful learning experiences that are also relevant beyond the game universe. If we get it right, we can give students the best of both modalities: the immediate feedback, exploratory opportunities, and leveled learning challenges of games combined with the opportunity to have a genuine impact.

Dewey Redux

"How can teachers build on learners' everyday experiences in Web 2.0-enabled contexts to engage them better in content area learning and prepare them for the future?" asks a paper by Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes (2009, p. 250). The word that caught my eye here was "build." A century ago, John Dewey wrote convincingly that in order to be meaningful, education must always be situated within the context of a leaner's experience, past and future. This insight seems obvious, so it's surprising how often it actually is overlooked. Plenty of research indicates that while today's youth live in a world increasingly saturated by digital media and communications, schools remain stuck in outdated Web 1.0 learning paradigms that have little connection to learners' lives.

So schools need to reboot for a Web 2.0 world; but more than that, they need to realize that many students have developed a diverse array of digital literacy skills before they even set foot in the classroom (youths' sophisticated copying and pasting in MySpace is one example cited by Greenhow et. al.). What does it mean for teachers to build on those skills? The fact that students arrive with enormously varying interests and degrees of access complicates the problem; schools must be prepared to cope with students who have never so much as used software to remove the red-eye from a digital snapshot and those who are old pros at creating and publishing on YouTube film clip mash-ups. Students need avenues for building basic Web 2.0 skills, but all of them, even the most proficient, must also be challenged to use those skills in new ways that align with educational goals. There is no way teachers can customize the curriculum for every student, nor can they possibly anticipate the spread of digital media proficiencies their students may have acquired.

The best way out of this fix seems to be a re-imagined role for teachers, in which they set open-ended problems and suggest directions of action or inquiry, allowing room along the way for students to develop the skills that best meet their needs. For teachers and administrators to attempt to discern what individual students know and do not know and then build curricula around their best guesses is a Sisyphean endeavor; if, on the hand, students are given problems to solve that naturally draw on existing skills, the dilemma begins to sort itself out.