Last week, Elise commented, “Filamentality seems to me to be more of a way to consolidate information into one place, kind of a make-your-own-reference page for a particular topic rather than as a lesson-building tool.”
This week I looked at a study published in 2004, that makes just this argument. The study was done by two researchers on whether introducing student teachers to Filamentality makes things easier or harder for them when they are using technology. Specifically, this paper examines a class of 41 student teachers who were taking a science education method class. All students had received instruction in Microsoft Office, the Internet (and searching techniques) and Hyperstudio.
As part of their class, students were asked to find appropriate web sites for an elementary science topic of their choosing, and develop a Hyperstudio Stack. For this study, the students were divided into two groups, one of which was trained in Filamentality (specifically Hotlists and Scrapbooks) and one of which was not. The researchers found that the students who used Filamentality had a much easier time organizing their presentations. The control (non-Filamentality) group did not effectively organize the results of their web searches as they did them, and so they spent a lot of extra time re-doing their same searches.
The researchers found that at the end of the class the Filamentality group had higher confidence levels, and lower PTE (perceived task effort) on the difficulty of Hyperstack and the Internet. Filamentality effectively helped these students “manage the cognitive load and their PTE… more efficiently and effectively and consequently it may influence their confidence in using ICT (Information & Communication Technology) tools” (page 31).
The take home message to me is that although you might think that having students learn more technology would stress them out, if the technology is ultimately helpful (like Filamentality was for these students), stress & sense of difficulty may actually decrease with additional technology. Prior to reading this paper I hadn’t thought as much of using Filamentality as an intermediate step (as opposed to the final product) or as just a way for me to personally (or students to personally) organize websites.
I found that this paper made a compelling case – at least for those students who are not tech savvy and don’t know about social bookmarking. What are your thoughts?
Source: Angeli, C. & Valanides, N. (2004). The effect of electronic scaffolding for technology integration on perceived task effort and confidence of primary student teachers. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 37 (1), 29-43.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Thanks for implementing this study into your discussion. Organization is a great way to relieve stress over classwork so I can definitely see your point that if technology helps you to be better organized it would increase your confidence and lower your PTE (a phrase I was not familiar with but can appreciate). This seems to me to be the best use/purpose of Filamentality. This is not only for teachers developing lessons. If we teach our students how to effectively use such a tool, they too can learn to better organize their thoughts and will experience less stress and have more confidence in their own abilities.
This is a use of filamentality that I wouldn't have thought of either. It makes sense to use technology to organize technology. I think it is likely that students would balk at the suggestion that they need to add a step to their process but it is becomes a regular expectation they will adopt it as a tool.
Post a Comment