TLT 471. TQ #1 National Education Technology “Plan”

The picture above was taken of Michael Phelps after he won the 100 meter butterfly in the Olympics in Beijing by 1/100th of a second. Anders Ericsson (2004) would say that the 1/100th of a second difference between winning and losing was the result of “Deliberate, difficult practice undertaken over a long period of time, while receiving informative feedback, and having opportunities for repetition and correction of errors, which leads to elite performance.”

Phelps deliberate “difficult” practice includes swimming 80,000 meters a week (50 miles). He practices 365 days a years (52 days per years more than most other competitive swimmers. Every race that he swims is filmed above and below the water – every meter is broken down mathematically and analyzed by fluid mechanics programs. Numbers of strokes, speed of stokes, angles of fingertips entering the water, and the tilt of is head is adjusted based on this “feedback” to “correct his “errors” so he can reduce water resistance and increase his speed. His blood is drawn and a comprehensive blood analysis is run after each race to measure how many millimoles of muscular waste needs to be cleared out of his system before his next race. This “feedback” directs Phelps regarding the speed and the number of warm down laps he needs to swim after his races to drop his lactic acid levels back down to peak performance levels.

Why do I introduce you to this notion of deliberate practice and offer Michael Phelps as an example? I highlight the concept of deliberate, difficult practice, with meaningful and actionable feedback for the correction of errors (certainly not standardized tests), because foundational ideas like hard work, ambition, and dedication (time investment) were noticeably absent in the US National Education Technology Plan.

How can we possibly “Strengthen Leadership” without accountability and no mention of performance reviews with “teeth?” How will “Innovative Budgeting” ever occur in an educational system run by an undisciplined government that has proven it can’t fiscally manage anything well? The concept of “Improving Teacher Training” sounds good, but who is accountable for making it happen? I find it interesting that while completing my M.Ed at Temple (1999-2003) and my LST MS here at Lehigh (2005-2010), I have not had one online course. If not me, who? The grand generic verbalization continued with “Support eLearning”, “Encourage Broadband Access”, “Move Toward Digital Content”, and “Integrate Data Systems”, but I was left wondering about substance. If we actually achieve these goals as written and develop and disseminate quality educational content utilizing technology who will come if we haven’t addressed the foundational ideas of hard work, ambition, and dedication (time investment)? For example only 105,000 intrinsically motivated students enrolled for courses at the Florida Virtual School in 2008 (FVS Minutes, 2008), representing only 4% of the state’s total 2,640,000 students (Florida Department of Education, 2006).
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The Florida Virtual School has truly embraced US National Education Technology Plan. If fact, based on my brief investigation of their work I was impressed by the diverse, robust curriculum and quality of the content. Clearly, the effort at FVS is to serve motivated, ambitious students who have high expectations by offering them coursework that might not be available at their school. Who else but the top 4% of students would want to take courses like AP Microeconomics, AP Art History, AP Computer Science, AP Statistics, AP Calculus, Mandarin Chinese, Latin, Marine Science, etc.? I took a brief tour of the Mandarin Chinese course and was amazed at its depth. Students are immersed in the Chinese culture as virtual exchange students in China as they learn to listen, speak, read and write the language. If fact, my brief exposure to the Mandarin course content has motivated me to call the school to see if I can enroll as an out of state (adult) student. Out of state students can participate in FVS courses for a fee. If this is an option I am also interested in taking the Flash Animation course and the AP Art History course, as well. FVS is an awesome example of what is possible, but it is, unfortunately, an exception. But the FVS example also exposes our bigger “foundational” problem – the elephant in the room that no one has the political courage to address – How do we create a culture of “chasing excellence” in which the remaining 96% of Florida students want to participate in the same kinds of challenging coursework? By serving only the top 4%, 10%, or 20% we still lose as a nation.

According to Craig Barrett (Intel Presentation, 2008), there are more kids in China learning English than our 307,305,000 US citizens (US Population Clock, Aug 29, 2009). In the United States, only about 24,000 students in grades seven through 12 study Chinese (Aratabi, 2006). We are doomed by these kinds of numbers unless we adopt an Asian culture in which everyone in the United States is passionately devoted to educational excellence that only results from hard work, ambition, and life-long dedication (time investment).

References

Aratabi, Lori (2006). With a Changing World Comes An Urgency to Learn Chinese. Washington Post. Saturday, August 26, 2006. Accessed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082501418_pf.html, August 29, 2009.

Florida Department of Education, accessed at http://www.fldoe.org/news/2006/2006_11_17.asp , August 29, 2009

Florida Virtual Schools Board of Trustee Official Minutes, Tuesday, June 24, 2008, accessed at http://www.flvs.net/Pages/default.aspx, August 29, 2009

K. Anders Ericsson, Ph.D. / Department of Psychology / Florida State University
Ericsson K.A. (2004). Deliberate practice and the acquisition and maintenance of expert performance in medicine and related domains. Academic Medicine. Vol. 79, No. 10: S70-S81

US and World Population Clock, accessed at http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html, August 29, 2009.

Who Needs Tutorials When You've Got Phunland!

When I was doing my homework this weekend, my 15-year old daughter looked over my shoulder. She first asked me what I was doing and then almost immediately gutturally moaned the word “physics” when she noticed the “2D physics sandbox” descriptor under the “phun” logo. Even though she won’t experience physics until next year, the course reputation has already been clearly communicated to Kelsey by her three older siblings. It’s also interesting to note that this groan came from an honors student who plans on pursuing a biology or chemistry undergraduate major when she enters college in 2011. But…as she watched me work within the application for a few minutes, Kelsey asked me if she could try the program and I promptly relinquished my seat to observe her.

I found it interesting that she quickly disregarded the program’s tutorial – like father, like daughter. I too, found the tutorial to be non-intuitive and frustrating. It seemed that I should be able to apply the tutorial directions directly into the program by following sequential instructions – which would have been awesome – but I could not achieve this kind of functionality. Fortunately, the Phunland program itself is so interesting and elegantly simple, that even people not intrinsically “wired” for physics like Kelsey and me felt compelled to just experiment with the program, learning through trial and error, which, I would argue is the ultimate goal of any science course or program. Through trial and error (and a little bit of back and forth with the tutorial for basic command guidance) with simple geometric shapes, springs and water, I spent an inordinate amount of time adjusting the friction and density of my moving objects in an effort to try and control the gravitational movement of my objects. As I navigated through the program I concluded that this is a wonderful constructivist teaching tool that quickly establishes baseline accurate or inaccurate understandings and through experimentation constructs new meaning for learners. I’m assuming that Phunland is the program you refer to as “aimed at high [intrinsic] motivation” given a learner’s natural tendency to want to play with the program, and Concord’s “molecular Work Bench” as the application focused on “deeper content.” If so, I’m not sure I agree with this general statement because I think that Phunland, used to enhance the instruction of a gifted physics teacher, could truly help make physics relevant and meaningful to even the most resistant and intimidated science students, helping to achieve a much deeper level of content understanding.

The Concord Molecular Work Bench program utilized sequenced instruction to step through a lesson focused on random motion and molecular stickiness. In fact, I would say that the instructional design of the lesson really negated the need for the typical “how to use the program” tutorial and replaced it with linearally sequenced content with instructions that simply moved the learner through a lesson with very, very specific learning objectives. While the program clearly transferred the ideas of “stickiness” variables of positive and negative charges as well as the effects of temperature on self-assembly, for me there was no depth of understanding transferred. So even though the sequential instructions made the application easy to use and navigate this “strength” was also the program’s weakness in that experimentation beyond the well-defined lesson parameters was not possible. Even though I am often a fan of the Corcord Consortium methodology, because manipulating animations teaches complex content infinitely better than any textbook can, I’d have to say that I preferred Phunland’s more free wheeling blank canvas approach when comparing the two for this assignment. I think that both programs could be powerful adjunctive tools in the hands of a good teacher depending upon the specific learning objectives that need to be achieved.

Sketchup and POV-Ray Assignment

The first image above was developed using POV-Ray, the coding for which can be found below. The second image was developed using Google's Sketchup. I found the Google product to be easy to learn and will probable find ways to utilize this application in our day to day training development work at B. Braun. The Sketchup illustration above is a diagram of a laminar flow hood, which is utilized in pharmacy clean rooms for sterile compounding processes.

The POV-Ray application was an exercise in futility. I found the program to be insanely complicated, non-intuitive and very frustrating. My dominate learning styles are visual spatial and verbal/linguistic. I am a weak logical mathematical learner, so the trial and error of arbitrarily plugging in coordinates to just place a star in my solar system illustration (above) was incredibly time consuming. The ability to copy, paste and drag shapes directly on the actual rendered image would have made creation a lot easier. If PON-Ray and Photo shop were a combined application, I could see it's ability to automatically create relationships between image objects to be compelling, but for me the inability to work on the "canvas" with PON-Ray wasn't a pleasant experience.

#include "colors.inc"
global_settings { assumed_gamma 1.0 }

background { color rgb <0,> }


camera { location <0.0,>
direction 1.5*z
right x*image_width/image_height
look_at <0.0,> }

light_source { <0,>
color rgb <1,>
translate <-5, 5, -5> }

light_source { <0,>
color rgb <0,>
translate <6,> }

light_source { <0,>
color rgb <0,>
translate <6,> }

sphere
{ <0,>, 2.5
pigment { color Gray }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/2 }
}

sphere
{ <-2, -3, 5>, 0.5
pigment { color Blue }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}

sphere
{ <-2,-3, 12> 1.5
pigment { color Cyan }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/2 }
}

sphere
{ <2,>, 0.5
pigment { color Blue }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}

sphere
{ <2,>, 0.25
pigment { color Cyan }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}

sphere
{ <2,>, 0.25
pigment { color Red }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}

sphere
{ <0,>, 0.25
pigment { color Red }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}
sphere
{ <-5, -4, 8>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}

sphere
{ <-5.5, -4.5, 8.5>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <3,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}

sphere
{ <3.5,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <3.5,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <2.75,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <2,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <2.5,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <3,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <1.85,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}

TQ#7 Gapminder: “If Serious People Use the Internet the Internet Will Get Serious Content”

According to Dr. Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorates as one attends to ever more tasks. Claudia Koonz, professor of history at Duke University, encourages her students to “disconnect” from technology. She thinks students today have an aversion for complexity that is directly related to multitasking with technology. “It’s as if they have too many windows open on their hard drive,” she says. “In order to have a taste for sifting through different layers of truth, you have to stay with a topic and pursue it deeply, rather than go across the surface with your tool bar.” Today, students are sorters of the superficial, which results in mediocre learning versus mastery learning. How can a student be truly immersed in social studies research while listening to an AC/DC song on iTunes between checking email, while IMing multiple friends? The situation is further exacerbated when one looks at the depth of online content and the value of online content as opposed to reading peer-reviewed journal articles and studies and (God forbid) a genuine published book related to the social studies topic of interest. (Time, March 27, 2006) Even though I consider myself an enthusiastic early adopter of all kinds of technological tools to enhance performance, I often worry that digitally available information and resources are almost always considered credible by most students. In addition, I worry about the lack of content depth even if the digital information is, in fact, credible. I believe that all of the factors listed above are creating a digital “Cliffs Notes” generation who feel that two or three bullet points related to just about any topic is acceptable. That being said, I often find myself to be the lone skeptic – waiting to assess the real return of any technological teaching or learning application before advocating its use.

That being said, I rarely see any software application that “sells” me instantaneously, I was absolutely blown away by Hans Rosling’s Gapminders data mining application. Wow! Dr. Rosling has actually developed a truly transformational tool that helps students think about thinking. Gapminders can help learners overcome their preconceived ideas and encourages digging deeper into the data once the “gap” between their prior understandings and new information has been identified (truly a constructivist learning environment that creates new understandings). There are limitations in using the tool. For example, in the first image at the top of the posting, I was disappointed that information was limited to the years 1995-2006 when I tried to compare the GDP of countries to 8th grade math achievement – so even with this wonderful tool data depth will drive practical application.

I preferred working with the deeper data bases like when I compared electrical power consumption (kWh per capita) to total income (GDP). Between 1960 and 2005 it is interesting to me that India and China seem to be accelerating (faster) up and to the right (more power use = more total income) as compared to a more gradual up and to the right trend for the US. It left me wondering about the new “space” race for cheaper/cleaner energy solutions. Is the US at a disadvantage in having to restructure an entrenched 20th century energy infrastructure versus China and India who may be able to transition faster to 21rst century energy solutions like solar, geothermal, wind, Etc.? I found myself wanting more and deeper data to fill the “gap” in my knowledge. I found that increasing power consumption per capita was associated with:

• Increasing health expenditures per capita
• Increased adult literary rates
• More patent applications
• Increase income per person
• Greater total CO2 emissions
• Increased life expectancy
• Decreased average number of children per woman
• Decreasing infant mortality rates

For me, Gapminder gives the student who is wired for surfing the ability to do so within a constrained environment that encourages sifting through different layers and staying with complex topics and pursuing them more deeply. This tool could truly be a catalyst for mastery learning, specifically around the content areas that contain the widest and deepest databases. I see only upside – no down side in the use of this exciting tool. Kudos to Dr. Rosling on his accomplishment thus far with Gapminder and best wishes for his continued “liberation” of data to continue enhancing the capabilities of this transformational learning application.

TQ#6 A Quixotic Search for Elegant Learning Solutions

In the readings and during the web-conferencing research this week I became increasingly angry regarding the notion that collaboration was some sort of magic bullet and that virtual classrooms somehow facilitate the sociocognitive process better than live classrooms.

Jonassen referring to Sardamalia suggests that the best way to deal with divergent or opposing ideas is to rise above their incompatibilities. This statement is not just nonsensical, but dangerous. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. The immersion of students in collaborative environments in which there are no ideas that win or lose, or even “compromise” ideas is simply setting them up for failure. In the real, more competitive global economy the better most “right” idea wins.

Jonassen also suggests that virtual collaboration somehow creates “communities” of intrinsically motivated learners in which individual students are no longer “disconnected” or competing with each other in live classroom settings. The author’s view that online collaboration somehow removes the social communities and cliques that include some and exclude others in live classroom environments is misguided. In fact, the implied anonymity of virtual environments, without the social filters of live classrooms, might create an even “meaner” environment for more passive, disenfranchised students.

That being said, given our investigation of Illuminate and my experience with Wedex (http://www.webex.com) at B. Braun Medical, there is absolutely nothing that online web-conferencing tools offer that can’t be accomplished better in a live classroom setting. Illuminate is not at all intuitive and I needed to invest about 2-3 hours to just figure out how to navigate the application. As can be seen in the screen shot that precedes this entry, we did discover how to load and share a PowerPoint presentation and a video. As we struggled through this discovery process we used the chat box to communicate because we had challenges using the audio feature. When we finally learned how to share the audio component we used both instant messaging and audio to communicate, but the limitations of the technology were barely tolerable. The lag time between a comment made by one person, who then needed to relinquish audio control over to another, stifled the collaborative process. Beyond the inability to talk normally, the need to constantly “enable” or “disable” the application’s features to “share” content was a creativity killer.

Illuminate, like Webex, is a less expensive alternative to push out information by a very skilled moderator to a geographically dispersed audience. For example, if we need just two hours to teach sales reps in all 50 states about a new product feature, it is more timely, faster and cheaper using Webex than the travel and expense required getting everyone who needs the information into a live classroom setting. However, the tool is used as a controlled virtual classroom where information is presented, during which questions can be asked and addressed. The benefit of Webex is that it combines web-conferencing with teleconferencing applications so that the audio component more clearly mirrors a live authentic conversation. If we feel a more collaborative, interpersonal, interactive environment is required for knowledge transfer we move field sales personnel into live classroom environments. I have not yet seen a virtual tool that can improve upon the sociocognitive learning process of a great live classroom environment.

In 1871 Edward Jarvis studied 1,741 cases of insanity and concluded that too much cognitive effort was responsible for 205 of them. This study led to shortening school days and lengthening summer vacations “to reduce time spent studying, because long periods of respite could save the mind from injury” (Kenneth Gold, School’s In: The History of Summer Education in American Public Schools, 2002). I believe that this American legacy of less time in the classroom, aligned with a distant western agricultural mindset, has much do with the performance of our students when compared with global peers. We spend an inordinate amount of time focused on solutions that include technology integration, reducing class size, rewriting curricula, etc., but avoid discussing one of the overarching issues related to student performance, which is the length of the time American students spend in the classroom – an average of 180 days per year. Given that South Korean Students spend 220 days a year in the classroom and Japanese students spend 243 days a year in the classroom one has to wonder why we spend so much time on ancillary, nice-to-have, academically interesting topics like the value of web-conferencing.

American students need to spend more time in classroom and work harder than they do now. They need to learn how to collaborate with others, but more emphasis needs to be focused on developing compelling arguments and leading others to action. They need to learn how to compete effectively, learning how to win gracefully and how to continuously learn through losing, or a common Chinese proverb directed at the United States will become a reality – fu bu guo san dai (wealth doesn’t make if past three generations).

TQ#5 I Read About Concept Mapping and Created One – Certainly Not a “Game Changer” For Me

After reading Jonassen (Chapter 5), Modeling With Technologies and after completing the Cmap exercise pictured above, I’m surprised we focused that much energy on this topic. To me, his discussions related to modeling with systems dynamics tools, modeling problems with spreadsheets, modeling thinking with expert systems, and modeling experiences with expert systems was much more compelling.

Perhaps I’m not impressed because beyond learning how to navigate the application, working with the tool did not require much effort around a content area that was personally relevant or meaningful to me. That being said, I think that Jonassen’s recommendation that concept mapping tools be used for reflection during an entire course of study makes sense, which is probably why I didn’t benefit much from the Cmap exercise. A concept map used as a metacognitive, think-about-thinking, facilitator to help make sense of sequentially, increasingly comprehensive and complex domain knowledge could be a wonderful way of identifying knowledge gaps or unanswered questions. I will consider using concept mapping as I work through an upcoming 18-month venipuncture simulator pilot study at B. Braun. I believe that this will result in a fairer assessment of concept mapping.

What I’m particularly excited about is systems dynamic tools. I was unaware of these kinds of programs. The potential educational value of these kinds of applications at B. Braun is significant. For example, if my sales representatives, or their anesthesia customers, could work through the variable orthopedic post surgical outcomes of nausea, vomiting and pain, by comparing and contrasting the use of a variety of preoperative and intraoperative anesthetic techniques, authentic knowledge would be constructed in a way that isn’t possible by discussing peer-reviewed journal articles on the topic. I will be researching Stella, VenSim, and PowerSim to assess their capabilities to create this kind of a dynamic cause and effect teaching tool.

I might be a SupPapertarian! We use whatever works - didactic or constructivist methodologies to achieve desired learning outcomes

From a business perspective it is always interesting to me to observe the level of academic effort that is focused on arguing whether technology is a good thing or a bad thing, or whether a didactic approach is better or worse than a constructivist approach, or whether…or whether…

As an instructional leader in a business environment in which I am paid based on how well training accelerates improved performance, my approach to the design and delivery of products to improve knowledge, skills, behaviors and/or attitudes is fluid, based upon desired learning outcomes, which should be aligned with very, very specific organizational objectives. If I am a vocal advocate of any cognitive belief system, I would be considered a disciple of both Anders Ericsson’s work related to deliberate practice and Howard Gardner’s work related to multiple intelligences. Based on the overarching themes behind Wenglinsky’s opinions in “Using Technology Wisely” I believe we are more aligned than not regarding the appropriate integration of technological tools (broadly defined) to achieved optimal learner outcomes.

My view of how learners learn is illustrated in the organizational chart that precedes this narrative. The first step of the cognitive information processing sequence is sensory input, which includes the cumulative internal and external, or environmental stimulus, experienced by a person at any given moment in time. What this means is that the content we are trying to share is competing with their hunger pangs and the attractive student sitting three seats away…among a host of other distractions.

All of this stimuli hits a sensory register, which has limited capacity. It can only accept and hold a limited amount of sensory input. The sensory input is stored for about a half a second at which point it is either processed, because the student pays attention to the stimuli, or the sensory input is lost to accommodate new stimuli. Attention is the only way that sensory inputs reach conscious thought. Due to limited capacity our sales represntatives selectively choose to attend to certain incoming information while simultaneously choosing to ignore other information. Selective attention is a process by which students allocate resources to manage limited capacity.

Sensory input that is attended to and is selected for further processing moves to the temporary (or working) memory. At this stage, files on the hard drive or concepts and information stored in the long term memory are accessed for use in making sense of the incoming information. The storage duration of sensory input in working memory is longer than the sensory register, but still a very brief 15 to 30 seconds. Working memory, like the sensory register, has limited capacity. Information is stored in working memory in small chunks of data. These chunks of data will be lost, or pushed out, every 15-30 seconds to make room for new data unless the existing data is rehearsed (practiced) or encoded into long term memory for later recall. Rehearsal is the simple act of consciously looping or repeating the sensory input for recall later, like repeating a phone number until one has the chance to write it down. Encoding, on the other hand, happens when new information in the temporary memory matches or is aligned in some way to a sales representative’s existing concepts or anchoring ideas – their past experiences and prior learning. If a sale rep’s existing long term cognitive files are connected in some way to the information in short term memory these new ideas will be relevant to the rep and provide entry points for the new information to be filed.

What is remembered from our training is largely a function of what our sales representatives understand to begin with. The amount of prior knowledge possessed by reps and their interests will affect both their attention and recall of our training.

Like Gardner, my view is that the brain is modular and retains long-term memories in multiple systems. For example one theory is that the brain is split between two memory systems; verbal and non-verbal. The verbal memory module contains verbal and auditory memory files. The non-verbal memory module contains visual memory files, tactile memory files, and olfactory memory files. What this means, to those of us who wish to teach others, is that training sessions should seek to capture a sales rep’s attention utilizing a variety of techniques in an effort to make connections to these multiple long term files. The more long term memory files we open the better chance we have of our representatives encoding our presentations into a variety of these files for later recall.

So, how do we maximize learner retention and rapid recall to increase sales representative performance in the field in face to face customer engagements based on this view of coginitive information processing? We are neither the “sage on the stage” or the “guide on the side” – we are both. Whether we are conducting the didactic (showing) component of the training program or the constructavist (doing) component of the training program we purposefully design the program to capture a sales representative’s curiosity and interest (arousal) so that they will selectively choose pay attention to instruction. We also purposefully design our programs to make meaningful connections to what sales representatives already know (or what they know they will need to know to be successful) so training content is encoded into long term memory for retrieval when needed. Our blended training curriculums also help students to encode new knowledge more efficiently for easier storage and more rapid retrieval. All of our programs have components that are geared to verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, body/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and visual spatial learners. Finally, our programs are built to require significant cognitive effort. It’s impossible to selectively choose to ignore instruction when brains are actively engaging by doing. Most of our sales representatives think that we take this notion of “effort” to extremes because all are made to work. This is where we differ from the constructivist-purists who seem to believe that all students will be intrinsically motivated to take responsibility for their own learning when given the “right” tools to do so. This utopian view is simply not based in reality, which is why a more fluid, highly customized, didactic/constructivist, blended curriculum seems to be effective in facilitating continuous improvement across our diverse learner populate – those who choose to just get by, those who choose to be average, and those who choose to excel. In fact, we are rabid proponents of Ericsson’s theory that deliberate, increasingly difficult, repetitive practice over a long period of time, with meaningful feedback that allows learners for correction of errors, compels sales representatives of varying motivation to acquire extended domain-specific long-term working memory skills for more rapid (automatic) retrieval when needed during customer engagements (Ericcson and Kintsch, Psychological Review, 1995. Vol. 102, No 2. p211-245).

This all said, I see much similarity in the way that Wenglinsky’s describes student achievement using technological tools with how we leverage a multiple intellenge strategy for increased performance at B. Braun Medical. For example, during his observation of ecology of Antarctica project work at the ALL School in Worcester, MA, he found chat rooms with oceanographers (interpersonal learning), spreadsheets of data (logical mathematical learning), and slideshows (visual/special learning). At the Roots and Wings School, the 10-day 25-mile rafting “expedition” down the San Juan River is aligned with our notion of experiential learning that uses both effort and multiple intelligence theories to transfer, or construct, knowledge. Students were made to do real work (effort) during their expedition in which they kept journals (intrapersonal learning), constructed star chars (visual/spatial learning), examined petroglyphs (body/kinesthetic learning), and wrote scientific reports (verbal/linguistic learners).

According to Wenglinsky, the right “Technology” or “medium” facilitates student understanding by turning a concept into a concrete problem to solve. Presentation skills training at B. Braun does just this. The training program is a high pressure, high exposure live training program that is reinforced by just-in-time, self-paced print and mobile video reinforcement pieces. The live sessions support the intrapersonal learner by creating the environment of self-reflection and higher order reasoning required to develop creative sales presentation openings and closes. Learners are taught to develop presentations by writing in a graphic organizer, which supports the verbal/linguistic learner. Classroom presentation practice is a body/kinesthetic experience focused on voice intonation, tone, tempo and body language. There is also an interpersonal component in that the class participants conduct a keep, toss and add critique with each presenter. The reinforcement pieces are designed to share best practice presentation scripts in our FastFacts training newsletter and actual best practice video presentations can be downloaded from our Intranet and viewed on our sales rep’s laptops, video iPods, or Blackberry 8800 wireless handhelds. These reinforcement materials support verbal/linguistic and visual/spatial learners. Informal peer-to-peer real world best practice presentation videos have created a viral training program focused on continuous improvement.

Like Wenglinsky, we believe that technology is “neither inherently good, or bad,” but if integrated wisely can accelerate deeper levels of student understanding for application in the real world.