Cool Tools Don't Make the Grade

I'm as guilty as the next person. Perhaps more so. I was caught up in the "Cool sites"wave a couple of years ago, and I even spread the message of those tools on many an occasion. Now, however, I find myself sorry that I ever mentioned them.

Someone (I don't recall who) said that some high school teachers never leave the mindset of middle school in terms of the assignments they give. I'm beginning to see that now, especially with all the talk about "cool web 2.0 tools."

It's important to distinguish between "cool" and "good", or between "fun" and "appropriate." I can think of several that come to mind. For one, Xtranormal. You type out your script, choose your avatar(s), and make the move. The program makes the avatar read the script to you. Fun, probably. Cool, maybe. But, appropriate for senior high students, doubtful. Yes, you might use it to introduce a lesson, but why bother? What does it add that doesn't disappear within a few seconds after it's finished playing? How does that get the student thinking about the topic? And, if we're thinking that having the students create one is an activity that reaches the Create level in the new Bloom's Taxonomy, we're sadly mistaken. It's no more a match than is "creating" a PowerPoint. Any 2nd grader with typing skills can make an Xtranormal skit, so asking a 17 yr old student to make one is an insult to that student's intelligence, I believe.

I've written before about SecondLife, and questioned its use in the classroom. Not only is it a bandwidth hog and totally unfilterable, but it doesn't add anything to the discussion of my content. Yes, there are museums in SecondLife (SL), and some colleges hold classes there. But, so what? Even if you did have our class meet in SL you will still be grading them not on how well they are able to move their avatars, but on what they have to say. You can do that face to face. The technology doesn't let you do anything that you can't do without it - except fly. Yes, there are some children who have a hard time with face-to-face discussions and for whom SL may help. But, the occasional exception doesn't prove the rule. Just because you can make an avatar move - even fly - doesn't mean learning is taking place.

Another is Blabberize. Maybe it's fine for elementary students, but surely our 13 yr old and older students are capable of so much more. (Remember Tim Tyson's students a couple years ago at NECC?) If his middle school students are capable of those kinds of projects, then our 18 yr olds are capable of much more. MUCH more than making a President's picture talk.

I remember when we used to teach Hypercard and we first learned to scan something into a stack. Now THAT was REALLY cool stuff, at the time. Windows didn't exist yet, so we were the only ones with mice and the ability to put images and sounds together on a computer. We could even control a cdrom drive to play music. But, even with music playing and with scanned images (grey scale only), what mattered was the content and whether or not it appeared that the student did any thinking. Remember this discussion? “All you needed to do to get an A was to make something move.” I'm having deja-vu all over again :) when I hear people talking about Blabberize or Second Life or some of the other virtual reality environments.

I suppose that this is a natural evolution of things. You first become enamored with a web app (cuz we're geeks, after all) and you have to get over that before you can focus on the learning. But, from now on, when I mention a "cool tool" I'm going to be certain to talk about which NETS-S it matches, and where its use falls on the new Bloom's scale. If the tools doesn't make students think in a different or deeper way, then I'll be certain to reevaluate before showing it to anyone. Where does a talking carrot fall on the new Bloom's scale?

Update: 10-3-09
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