Technological Complexity (MCL)

After reading Ruchi's recent post, I got the urge to write about an example of technology usage gone wrong. Her main question is 'At what point does technology use no longer benefit society? One example of this might be when technology complicates things instead of simplifying them

One example of this is the New Trier language lab. As much as I think technology can help learning, trips to the language lab aren't trips to learn so much as gawk at overly-bureaucratic, expensive technology. The technology makes nothing easier, faster, or more efficient, and does very little that is unique. Further, it doesn't do much in the way of community-building, as the students are all confined to desks for extremely simple things.

Its once-weekly usage often consists of students logging in, then logging in to another system. Then the teacher might lock the screens and broadcast corrections of homework, while students correct it at their cubicles. After that, online textbook activities, discussions with other students via mic/headset, and other things like that take place. Perhaps IM conversations or pictionary (I have experienced each once and they were used terribly).

The problem with this is that almost all could be done in the classroom, face-to-face. The only unique things are the online textbook, which has extra practice, and recording. The head sets are high quality and great for recording, but they largely go unused for that purpose. Most interesting is that, while no student really needs the lab for most of these activities, the lab technology is so complicated it requires tech support staff to be present at all times because the teachers don't understand it. Does that make sense?

Although I hate to make this comparison, as I think it's exaggerated, it reminds me of Huck Finn, where Sawyer/Huck are acting out their escape plan. Clearly, they could just escape right out the door, but they invent this weird scenario where they invent hoops to jump through. That's how I feel in the language lab-- suspended in some artificial scenario. The only reason I need to use the lab technology to begin with is because we're placed in front of it, with no mobility. As a result, we do not use the technology as an extension of ourselves-- our actions are merely an extension of the technology.

Do you think the language lab is beneficial?

Are all voices heard?

"Language is... the means through which people make sense of their own experience, produce meaning, and act on the world... to ignore the role of language as a major force in shaping human identity is to... deny the life histories and experiences of the people who use it" (119).

In class it was mentioned that schools tend to value only what is quantified, and as a result quantifiable subjects are prioritized while other school programs, like art, get the boot. Another subject that can be victim to this is language education in general.



On standardized tests, the only language that is measured is Standard English, and pressure for schools to be "accountable" and do well on such tests has resulted in multicultural/bilingual education being pushed aside for exclusive emphasis on English. Other languages have no quantitative value, so there is less incentive for schools to focus on them in addition to English classes.

This causes problems for children who speak another language in the home. Language has strong ties to one's cultural identity and individual expression, and bilingual students often feel losses of self-worth, frustration, and anxiety when they are put under pressure to assimilate to English, as they are given what seems to be a choice between connection to their community and success in school. Like comparing appreciation for science to the arts, English is shown as more than a road to success-- it is instead portrayed as a more important language.

How importance is having linguistic diversity? On one hand, the loss of bilingual programs is hard for bilingual students. However, does multiculturalism, in some respects, just make it harder for Americans to communicate, as some would argue? Is it better to assimilate? What amount of assimilation should people from different ethnic backgrounds have to go through? How should English be portrayed in relation to other languages?

Token Black Historical Figures?

Typically when Black History Month rolls around, it's suddenly time for schoolchildren across America to learn about the civil rights movement through the stories of larger-than-life people like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Harriet Tubman. Despite the undeniable importance of these three figures, don't they act as America's token black historical figures?

The majority of history courses in America don't spend significant time acknowledging the African American perspective, or African history, but instead approach history from the European/"discoverer" perspective. In World History freshman year, I recall the textbook having more pages on Greek civilization than the entire African country continent.

While focusing on figures like MLK, Tubman, and Parks may seem to Americans to be a sufficient way to replace/make up for the lack of African American perspective in education, focusing on figures that are few-in-number but grand-in-persona makes it seem more like they’re exceptions to most of African American history rather than integral pieces of it. Almost as fast as these African Americans pop up in history courses, most traces of African Americans in American history disappear.

In the past, what has learning about African/African-American history been like for you? What aspects of African-American history should be incorporated more in to American education, if at all? What sort of picture does Black History Month paint about the nature of African-American history?

Standardized Testing as Business

Linked to previous.

Another interesting (and somewhat concerning) aspect of Standardized Testing is the fact that, at the heart of it, it's a business. And that's not to make a claim about the design of the tests being 'corrupt,' 'greedy,' or 'evil' or something-- it just means they have to follow business rules.

In 2001, education assessment consultant Nina Metzner talked about some of the problems with the standardized testing after millions of students' exams had scoring issues:

"There was a lack of personnel, a lack of time, too many projects, too few people."

The problem with this? This was before No Child Left Behind, legislation that expanded the pressure on the standardized testing industry by 50% by mandating schools test students more often in order to evaluate a school's success or failure.

Combine this with 6-week testing grade deadlines, and according essay-grading time contraints (one essay per 2 minutes). On top of that is the high demand for employees (which may be hired despite failing qualifying tests) to perform the mind-numbing and difficult task of putting consistent and accurate scores on hundreds of thousands of tests with guidelines that suck. The nature of the work as evaluating individual students' work (with fairness) is at odds with the job's business side (time limits and attempts at standardization). If standardized scorers don't conform to groupthink, they will not get anything scored or agreed upon that follows the highly-centralized business's standards, even though they are evaluating very diverse student input.

While the massive holes in the scoring process are not necessarily the result of 'bad intention' so much as an understandable disaster resulting from a combination of education and business, claiming standardized tests are actually standardized and scientific could not be more fraudulent. And sometimes these tests determine whether or not students get their diploma or not, or if a school passes or fails.

Standardized Testing vs Education & Variability

Recently I read a book about standardized testing. The author was a person who worked in the industry for 15 years in a number of different positions, participating in and supervising the scoring of written english/reading tests. It deals with a lot of the flaws within scoring "standardized" tests, pointing out how test scoring is not only designed poorly, but used to evaluate the wrong things at high stakes (i.e. schools under No Child Left Behind).

What I found most interesting about the process was that the criteria used to judge student responses to open-ended questions. Not only can the rubrics be too vague and subjective, they can also be far too strict and end up evaluating unimportant things. As a result, the scoring process can be very inconsistent and may result in matching written responses to the rubric's description rather than the score the written response deserves.

One example was of a 4th grade essay that was graded with a rubric emphasizing the correct use of the 5-paragraph form above any other writing criteria. As a result, an essay that was completely mechanically written ("The most important thing to me is my cat because she is fun. She is also loving. She is soft.") had to be scored higher than an essay that was impressive and very descriptive, but did not follow traditional 5-paragraph form.


What was, I thought, a particularly striking part of the book was when the author wrote:

"While rubrics are written by the best intentioned of assessment experts an classroom teachers, they can never--never!--come remotely close to addressing the million different ways [kids] answer questions. If nothing else, standardized testing has taught me the schoolchildren of America can be one creative bunch" (6).

The last phrase I didn't expect to hear at all. Thinking back to when I've taken standardized tests when I was younger, I never gave open ended questions much thought. I thought the assessments asked for very straightforward things. However, once you give a test to hundreds of thousands of little kids, things get muddy. How is a scorer supposed to get inside the head of the kids taking the tests to know what they were thinking if they took a different approach? If they answer in a creative (or just confusing) way that doesn't quite fit in the rubric, how is it scored? This can be disorienting to scorers. New, unique examples they come across while scoring can end up changing the way they grade several times within the same grading process, because they set a new precedent.

Also, the fact that we put value in to standardized tests (used to evaluate schools, test one before college, and determine who gets their diploma in some states) is rather concerning, considering the scoring of these tests essentially requires scorers to try and get thousands of student responses to fit in convenient little boxes. But the reality is that sometimes peoples' responses don't fit anywhere! As such, some scorers may have to resort to marking down 'incorrect answers' so much as 'different ones,' even different ones that are brilliant. It's interesting to see how literally standardized testing is opposed to diversity and creativity-- and "standardization" itself.