Spring 2005

Online teaching & learning

The object? Learning!

Visiting a primary school in rural Victoria left DAVID MCRAE with vivid impressions of the value of computer-based learning objects in the scheme of classroom learning.

We’re in Tongala—a small town in north-central Victoria—and we’re at its primary school. The school has ten classes all of mixed age cohorts. However, only one contains students from years 3–6 inclusive. Pam Davis’s class has 26 children grouped into five ‘table’ teams of mixed ages and abilities.

The class is working on the theme ‘The Antarctic’ and the room is decorated with masses of penguins and other relevant pictures and images. ‘Icy’ white plastic covers shelving and some other furniture not in consistent use. But there are four (uncovered) computers along one wall which are networked via the school’s intranet. To tune in, the day begins with a tables quiz. The quiz is followed by a game related to place value, the current topic.

Then the table groups move like well-oiled machines into activity stations: concrete materials on the floor, three desk-based activities and six students working in pairs at the computers on one of the ten variants (different focal points and degrees of difficulty) of the The Le@rning Federation’s learning object ‘Wishball’.

‘Wishball’ is specifically designed to help students understand and work with place value. The screen has a target number and a start number. You select the ‘spinner’ to give you a randomly-generated digit to adjust the start number to the target by adding and subtracting or, in some variants, using only one of those functions. The digit can be used as a unit, ten, hundred or thousand. You are supported on-screen by an abacus and a number line, both of which provide an account of the impact of the choices made. Watching and listening, it was evident that it was generating practice in estimation, strategy devising and use of basic arithmetic functions.

The students using the object found it readily on the school’s network, knew about the possible variants (‘I’m going for “Ultimate” today’) and how to play. All the students were active and purposefully engaged, and those working on the computer no less so. They were most enthusiastic about this aspect of their classroom program. They liked the number line and the abacus; they could describe the impact of their moves and were happy to discuss the strategies they employed. ‘You’re sort of doing maths without doing maths if you know what I mean’, said one.

It was as convincing a demonstration as you could wish for of the value of the computer-based learning objects to complement and enhance mainstream learning.

Pam Davis returned to teaching this year following a year acting as a project officer. Use of ICT was not included in her training, either in terms of general skill development or classroom use. She describes herself as having picked her skills up ‘along the way’.

One significant influence was her project officer experience when she was required to use a laptop regularly. It was also at this point that she encountered the TLF’s learning objects. She says their potential was obvious straight away and became ‘desperate to try them in the classroom. I thought the kids are going to love this. They are so multi-dimensional. They will be excellent for engagement and also for reinforcing what we are doing elsewhere. They’re too good not to use. Initially I thought, I’m not very good at this … oh well, I suppose the kids will be; and we worked it out together. I have been watching their confidence just flourish. They love using them.’

‘Frog Pond’ (focused on environmental issues) was one of the first she explored. ‘There were lots of things to do, lots of ways to go and you could follow ideas in depth.’ ‘Rap Machine’ (literacy) was another of her early interests. ‘This provided for kids who needed extension and a higher level of challenge and engagement. There wasn’t just one answer. There was plenty of variety and choice. Using these two objects in concert provided the opportunity to build in lots of other activities, such as writing tasks and getting in a guest speaker. One of the best things was getting the kids to perform their raps.’

One of the features of some of the objects Pam likes is that ‘they help you teach things that are hard to teach in other ways’. She used ‘Wishball’ as an example of this. ‘The abacus and the number line are very effective scaffolds to support the development of strategies to generate understanding of place value. It’s a very good ‘share’ activity. The kids talk through their strategies.’

Her colleague, Janice Hosking, the school’s ICT Coordinator, teaches a year 3–4 class. She remembers the mid 1980s when computers were just starting to have an impact. ‘At that time some teachers knew how to plug them in and that was about it. We didn’t use computers for teaching much, just ICT skill development, but the learning objects are a significant step up.’

‘The best thing about them is that kids get so engaged when they use them. But they help in other ways as well. We were working on Chance and Data and using ‘Sludge Machine’ (an object which requires users to estimate the chances of producing a particular form of drink from a set of sources), and I realised very quickly that some kids weren’t as advanced as I thought they were. It was a very efficient way of doing that.’

‘They are clearly getting something out of the interactivity. They come up with things quite regularly that I haven’t noticed or come across. For example, in ‘Lifestyle of a Platypus’, suddenly the environment is being logged so there is an impact on the location of the nest and the environment in general. In another case in the same object a storm occurs. These aspects of the objects make them much closer to real life and its surprises and variation than you might otherwise teach. You can present all this lovely content which allows them to make choices and interact, then you can see very quickly what they’ve learnt.’

‘Another of the things I appreciate is the choice available in the set up of an object. For example, the possibility of using sound and getting the object to ‘talk’ to you is very valuable with younger or less capable kids.’

Pam comments that the year recommendations are more flexible than their actual use indicates. ‘You can use all sorts of objects with all sorts of kids depending on your purpose. You might want to go back over something for reinforcement or to provide some students with a bit more challenge.’

Having the time to explore all the learning objects was the main drawback Pam found, ‘and you must explore them’ she says. ‘On the other hand all kids enjoy using them. All kids.’

David McRae is one of Australia’s most experienced education consultants.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au