Does your school have a media production design studio? If not, why not?
In the likely case your school does NOT have a media production studio, the reason for its absence may lie in the basic nature of educational institutions in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since their inception in response to the industrial revolution, most schools have been viewed as the location where content is transmitted from the minds of teachers/professors and approved textbooks into the minds of learners. Some people call this “fill the pail” learning.
It’s a pedagogical method with which our students are growing increasingly dissatisfied, particularly when it persists in purely analog (non-digital) forms. One mistake of some educational reformers of the early 20th century was to completely discredit “rote” learning and offer up student-centered, constructivist models more focused on process rather than content as a wholesale replacement for transmission-based learning models. In some cases, leaders of these reforms attempted to apply but often misinterpreted the ideas of theorists like John Dewey. There are certainly times and places for “fill the pail” learning, even in digitally infused 21st century learning environments. Learning interactions should not remain limited to one-way transmissions of ideas and facts, however. At some point (and hopefully often) learners need to be provided with opportunities to remix their learning and reflect their understanding of ideas, relationships and constructs by authoring original works. Teachers have traditionally used tests, essays, and worksheets/study guides to assess learning, but truly differentiated instruction provides not only differentiated opportunities for learning but also differentiated opportunities for assessment.
The assessment challenges shared by teachers with students can and should shift from, “Write a five page essay about that” to “How can you creatively and authentically reflect to me, your peers, and the rest of the world what you understand about our topic of study, and how that relates to issues that matter in the real world?”
The spark for this thought today that “every school needs a design studio” was the February 13th Wired article, “Today’s Homework: Make Good Games,” as well as thoughts shared by Marco Torres at MACE 2007 a couple of weeks ago.
Our schools have not traditionally been places where students author, collaborate on, and share their work with a global audience. That tradition needs to change. Expression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, California (referenced in the Wired article) is certainly breaking that mold in a dramatic way, but our K-12 schools as well as traditional community colleges and universities need to embrace the reality and positive potentials of user-created content as well.
One tangible way for educational leaders to promote the ethical and constructive uses of digital tools to build bridges and foster international/cross-cultural understanding is to support a media design studio in their school. This resource would not just be available to students and teachers in a media design elective course, but rather would be available on a check-out basis for all learners: Both during and after school.
User created content. It’s what’s for dinner. Led properly, constructive instructional challenges like these can be the sort of meals students just can’t get enough of.
Technorati Tags: dewey, design
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On this day..
- Great reason NOT to use iBuildApp – 2014
- eBooks Sandbox: a space to share free eBook experiments! – 2012
- Secret iPhone Agreement (now public) and Apple User Ethics – 2010
- Platforms for idea sharing are essential (even family learning blogs) – 2010
- A projector in my pocket and a Netbook in my satchel – 2009
- Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (CoSN 2009 closing keynote) – 2009
- Empowering 21st Century Superintendents to Achieve a Culture of Transformation through Technology – 2009
- The Sugar User-Interface Opportunity by Anne Gentle – 2009
- Google Apps: Implementation and Changing the Way We Do Business – 2009
- Navigating Beyond the Now: The Force, Trends, and Signals that will impact Learning in the Next Decade – 2009