Mrs. Booth and Desk Top Publishing

Are we on the brink of a new way of communicating our thoughts to one another? Absolutely. I have no doubt that the elementary kids of today will have a different way of presenting information to their students, if they choose the teaching profession. The future will be about inviting into schools the outcast cell phone, and kids having access to their own personal computers at younger and younger ages.

My graduation gift from high school was a typewriter. I was thrilled that I could type my papers and did not have to hand-write them all. I could not have predicted kids today would have to bring their own computer to college. We live in the “Nano” world with everything getting smaller. I am sure my daughter will be taking some kind of communication device with her in six years when she goes to college. I do not think it will even be the laptop. I imagine it will be something much smaller, or that each dorm room will have a built in laptop and all she will need will be a back-up and transfer device, like a key. On the other hand, maybe it will be a way of communicating that only Ted.com knows about right now.

The question of whether or not a low-tech publishing tool will be used in the future is a good one. I find myself reminiscing about Mrs. Booth’s after school poetry club. I was in fourth grade when Mrs. Booth created a poetry magazine. I still have my bundle of pages stapled together, copied on a hand-cranked mimeograph machine that smudged a little if you weren’t careful. Oh, but how we loved seeing our work in print. It is no different today; our kids love creating brochures and magazines. There is something very touching about not only seeing your written word in a form that others can enjoy, but also, in being able to hold it up high and wave it at somebody else with a shout, “Hey, did you see what I wrote?” This time honored tradition of linking pride and celebration with the publication of our thoughts and ideas will, I predict, keep alive and well the desktop publishing low-tech products that we have used for so long. The delivery mode (tablet, printing press, typewriter, laptop/printer) may change up in years to come, but I am convinced there is something innately human about holding one’s writing in one’s own hand. We are people living in a changing time, but as the world gets smaller, or flatter, we are also people with a longing to connect with one another and to tell our stories. As people in the present, we will continue to use desktop publishing tools in our schools for the near future.

In the book, Critical Connections: Communication for our Future, by the US Office of Technology Assessment, it speaks to the cost efficiency of desk top publishing, and also of the self-esteem and self-confidence levels that arise from dtp. This is a time for cutting costs, and definitely a time to increase the self-esteem and self-confidence of our students. Mrs. Booth was on to something back in the late seventies. I will always be grateful.

In Flight Reading

Tonight, while waiting for my flight to arrive in Islip, I perused the shelves of the travel mart and walked away with two finds. One was The Atlantic, this month with a headline of, "Is Google making us Stoopid?" by Nicholas Carr, who wrote The Big Switch: Rewiring the Word from Edison to Google. The magazine was a must buy and the article takes a good look at how our brains are being rewired (perhaps) to read shorter pieces, to skim the War and Peace novels we may have once read. The other purchase was My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. Cohort members will remember her as the effective presenter who used the real human brain in the Garr Reynolds presentation. I was very impressed with Jill, and having a daughter who has a brain injury, and family members who have experienced stroke, I am very interested in how she says she healed her brain in the eight years since her stroke. There was one more book that I had my eye on. It was Deirdre Breakenridge's new book: PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences. Her website is: http://www.deirdrebreakenridge.com/. She has a lot to say that ties in with our class. Winding down now from the big New York weekend where my twin great-nieces were Christened. Thank goodness for delays and airport travel marts.

Zen Dad

Listening to Garr's presentation, I couldn't help but think of my Dad. Dad is a regular on Ted.com, and sends me links from time to time when he sees something he thinks I'll like. About two years ago, he sent me a link from Ted.com that showed a presenter using an infra-red projected keyboard and a display that could be moved around with your fingers-a whole lot of touching going on. A few months later out came the ipod touch. I remember looking at the Ted presentation and thinking, "What in the world will they use that application for?" I also thought it would definitely make its way into the educational field, as kids are so tactile. That is one of the things I hate about the laptops I use with my students, they want to touch the screens, and I have to be after them the whole time to "not touch the screens." I predict that will change in the near future. Kids need to touch things to own them.

Another connection to Garr's presentation is that I gave Dad a copy of A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink, for Father's Day. I am also reading this book that so many people have recommended, and so we are going to talk about it together when we are done reading it.

Dad started out as a two-way radio repair guy, and then worked up to owning his own 2 way shop. Now, he sells cell phones and the repair part is very minimal. Disposable world.

I feel so lucky to have grown up with a person like Dad, who organized a lot of white space around whatever he did. His basement shop with little drawers filled with transisters and screws was organized based on his grand-father's saying that, "You should be able to walk into your shop and find anything with the lights turned off." Dad kept things simple, found time to explain things in ways I could understand, and was and is a great storyteller. So, in light of our work this week, I am keeping in mind my Dad, and the great example of simple, direct presentation he has given me for forty-five years.

Germane Load

How do you think we might work with teachers to explain and optimize the germane load? This is such a great question, Demetri, and thank you for the excellent article at http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/chipperfield/index.htm .

It took me a while to read the article, as it was new information for me, but so well written and profound. In light of the article, I think that we could show teachers an animated, audio-enhanced movie, or slide-show, that would provide examples of the principles of design as laid out by Mayer and Moreno (2002). We should show examples of what we are trying to teach them about germane load. "Learning, changing a novice to an expert and the formation of new schema adds to the load on working memory. Working memory must process this new information into advanced and more complex schema...this is called germane load" (Chipperfield, 2004). Teachers should be taught, as all learners, in a way that reduces their extrinsic load (all of the external distractors). The staff development piece should be held in an environment with as little distraction as possible. Staff should be made comfortable with some ground rules, such as paying attention to adult learners needs for using the facilities and turning off cell phones. The environment should be discussed at the beginning of the presentation in order to set the learner's minds at rest, and allow the brain to focus on creating schema and integrating the schema into long-term memory. Paper and pencil, or computers should be made available for those students who are gaining more than seven new ideas from the presentation. This way, the working memory is not overburdened, and there is a place to spill over into a "holding place" until the brain processes the initial seven pieces of information. That is one strategy I applied when reading this article; I took notes on a Word doc to read at a later time, because the information was dense. I wanted to move from novice to expert in the use of the language about germane load, so I took notes and pulled out the important bits that I thought were relevant to Demetri's question.

Acknowledging that each person's intrinsic load is what they bring to the table, the germane load is the area which we can effectively affect through the design of multimedia. Teachers would need to see examples of slides, much as we made in week one's assignment, side-by-side that show the effectiveness of Mayer and Moreno's principles. Teachers should be given time to create their own examples to demonstrate a model and then the problem to be solved. This feels key to the learner's aquisition of new knowledge, which, as teachers, should be our ultimate goal.

I will take what we have discussed this week and share it with my classroom teachers in my study group this Fall. I will share it in small pieces, first showing them an overloaded slideshow, and then asking them to find what is wrong with it. Most will deduce that the slideshow has too much information in it. I think if they see this, they will begin to understand what cognitive load is all about. I will also share with my learners/staff members my personal story of learning to work with cognitive load during the last three years. I think the personal story sometimes is long remembered and humanizes the facilitator. I believe it will be well-received.

Cognitive Load

Cognitive Load
I have hesitated in writing about cognitive load, because it is a topic that has been very much a part of my life for the past three years. Three years ago, my daughter was hit by a car while riding her bike, and suffered a traumatic brain injury. Following her stint in the ICU (11 days in coma), I accompanied her to a locked ward at National Rehabilitation Hospital in DC where I first heard about cognitive load.

I know that is a little heavy for a blog post, but there you have it. Real life. It happens.

So, cognitive load became a part of my vocabulary. Not overwhelming the brain while it was healing. Chunking ideas and words together as she rebuilt her engine. We say she had a restart, the way computers do. She had to put little things back into the system like learning to brush her teeth, and learning to sit, and stand and walk.

Cognitive load is something we still have to watch three years later. She is particularly sensitive to cognitive fatigue, and this is caused by having too much information in her working memory at one time. This causes her to be more tired than your average kid. Recently she had three exams on the same day. She did not do well on any of them, even though she studied and knew the material. We know this is due to cognitive load.

Stress is also a factor in cognitive load. When we have more stress than usual, we tend to slow down, and need more time to process new information. For my part, I developed post-traumatic stress syndrome, and so when I am overwhelmed with a week like this one where I am packing up a room to move elsewhere in the school, and dealing with a crashing computer, AND starting a new class, I tend to slow down and chunk things into little pieces like getting things done on the day they are due.

When we are presenting teachers with new information, we need to be sensitive to the load they are already under, and also, to remind them that their students are not a one size fits all group of kids. Chunking is good for all kids. Accessing prior knowledge is good for all kids. Presenting one concept at a time and building on it is good for all kids.

There is always a silver lining. The lessons we learned in restarting our daughter have made me a better teacher, because I look at each child, and each adult learner as an individual who wants to learn, but who comes with their own ways of accessing the information.

Wow! I am finding it easier to create in an air-conditioned room. At first, I thought I'd go with a tried and true tool, and use my .mac account to create a blog, but it was not working in class. So, now, in the comfort of my little home, with my little doggie by my side, I am ready to tackle tonight's challenge. I may move a little slower than some, but I get it in the long run.

I know the article about cognitive load is for our meeting on Thursday, but tonight I was living the load. Too much in too little time for this overloaded brain, coupled with the heat in that room of ours! Anyway, I think I'll be able to catch up in the very near future.

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