Engage or entertain?

Engage: to hold the attention of : to induce to participate

Entertain: to provide entertainment [amusement or diversion provided especially by performers] m-w.com

It's a fallacy to believe today's students are unhappy unless they are entertained.

In Tuesday night's PBS show, Growing Up Online* (an episode of Frontline) a classroom teacher lamented that given the amount of time kids are spending on line that they now need to be entertained if you want their attention. It's not an uncommon complaint.

But I don't believe it is a valid one. The terms "entertain" and "engage" are being used synonymously. There are important distinctions. 

• Entertainment's primary purpose is to create an enjoyable experience; engagement's primary purpose is to focus attention so learning occurs.
• Entertainment is ephemeral, often frivolous; engagement creates long-lasting results and deals with important issues.
• Entertainment needs have little relevance to the the reader/watcher/listener; engagement experiences most often relate directly to the learner.
• Entertainment is an escape from problems; engagement involves solving problems.
• Entertainment results through the creativity of others; engagement asks for creativity on the part of the learner.
• Perhaps the greatest distinction is that entertain is often passive, whereas engagment is active or interactive.
  

I am not convinced that kids need constant entertainment anymore that any of us do. But they do demand, and should, learning that is engaging.

Just a few random thoughts early this morning as I finish preparing for the three workshops I am giving today at Indiana's ICE conference [today's educators are as demanding as any Net Gen student], I hope I remember the distinction myself.

Is there a difference between entertaining and engaging the learner? How do you make the distinction? 

 * I thought the Frontline program was excellent and balanced. I especially appreciated experts like Anne Collier and Danah Boyd rather than some spooky guy from the FBI. Some good parenting lessons in it as well.

Give a teacher a computer

With apologies to author Laura Numeroff and illustrator Felicia Bond. The LWW brought home Mouse Cookies & More: A Treasury this weekend and it started me thinking...

Give a teacher a computer

Give a teacher a computer,
    And he will want Internet access.

Give a teacher Internet access,
     And she'll most likely want an e-mail account.

Give a teacher e-mail,
    And he'll just want learning games and more computers in her classroom. And tech support.

Give a teacher learning games,
    And she'll want streaming video.

Give a teacher videos,
    And he'll insist on an LCD projector permanently mounted in his classroom (with speakers).

Give a teacher a projector,
    And she'll ask for an interactive white board (and training and time for collaboration and resources to use with it).

Give a teacher an IWB,
    Then he wants a student response system, a wireless slate, and a document camera (and more support).

Give a teacher tech,
    And then she wants all her kids to have it too. And the skills to use it well.

We'll that's the theory anyway and it holds for lots of my teachers. I always find it amazing (and even a little frustrating) that some teachers can't get enough technology in their classrooms and give their kids enough experiences using it, while other teachers still grumble at even having to use anything more complicated than an overhead projector. And I don't think it breaks down neatly along generational lines. Perhaps those who are reluctant were frightened by a vacuum cleaner as small children.

_______________

As an aside, this comes from a travel advice column in this morning's Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper when the author comments on the actions taken by a person whose hotel reservations were lost:

I think you handled this grievance pretty well. Call the hotel was an excellent idea, and so was following up with Expedia. But you should have pinged Hyatt again...

Pinged?  First time I've seen this geeky word move from technical to general use. According to WIkipedia, the fellow who wrote the first Ping program back in '83 took the term from the sound sonar makes and only later was the acronym "Packet InterNet Grouper" devised. More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

If you'll excuse me, I think I'll get the telephone and go ping my kids... 

Can we cheat-proof schools?

"It's not the dumb kids who cheat," one Bay Area prep school student told me. "It's the kids with a 4.6 grade-point average who are under so much pressure to keep their grades up and get into the best colleges. They're the ones who are smart enough to figure out how to cheat without getting caught." from "Everybody Does It" by Regan McMahon, San Francisco Chronicle,Sept 9, 2007

It's time we made a serious effort in finding pedagogical means of ending cheating. When 90% of high school students admit to cheating, something is out of whack. And it is hard to point a finger an entire generation of kids.

I've addressed why kids might cheat and how one might plagiarize-proof research assignments. But can teachers help make tests and homework cheat-proof as well?

McMahon suggests Top 5 Ways to Curb Cheating

• Create an honor code with student input so they're invested in it
• Seriously punish cheaters according the academic integrity policy
• Create multiple versions of tests to make purloined answer keys useless
• Ban electronic devices in testing rooms
• Develop multiple modes of assessment so the grade is not determined primarily on tests

Of these, I would endorse last one. Here are Johnson's Top 5 Ways to Curb Cheating:

• Use performance-based assessments that require personal application of or reaction to the topic
• Be very clear about what will be tested/assessed
• Make every assignment a group assignment with expectations that the role of each group member be clearly defined
• Only make assignments that are actually necessary (Alfie Kohn writes that there is little correlation between test scores and homework.)
  
• Eliminate "objective tests" or make them all open book.
  

What's wrong with the honor code business? Nothing except it seems we are in a social values shift about cheating and about property rights if 90% of a population no longer holds an older value. Personally, given my Boomer sensitivities, I think kids who cheat are little weasels. But then the majority of US citizens, by generations usually, have also changed their views on things like slavery, women's rights, gay rights, seat belts, smoking, littering, the environment, and Michael Jackson from what they were at one time.

I'd like to bang a drum about the need for a society that places less emphasis on test scores, that has a better means of choosing kids for colleges, and that values non-testable attributes of people. But you wouldn't want to listen and it wouldn't do much good. What is within the individual teacher's sphere of influence?

Anyway, read the article in the Chronicle and tell me how you would curb the cheating epidemic... 

Oh, I expect to get beat up on this entry. Have at it.