Of Legos and Sock Puppets – Knowing When to Go Low-tech

My first-year students find Plato’s The Republic daunting – especially the part of the book that requires sewing. My M.P.A. students claim that creating nonprofit organizations is difficult – when another group has taken all of the yellow legos. Deprived of their i-whatevers and Power-thingies, my students reluctantly admit to the joys of low-tech learning semester after semester. What is it about toys and tactility…?

I’m no luddite, really. I willingly volunteered to blog about teaching. I check my e-mail frequently. I occasionally carry the cell phone my friends bought me… and as a rhetorician, I appreciate the deliciously rich communicative context of this and other e-exchanges. But there is something curiously wonderful about pretending that a tiny piece of molded plastic is “grass” or “brick” or learning where the thread goes to make a needle sew (i.e., the first question I get every time my PUB 1250 students make sock puppets for our productions of the Allegory of the Cave).

As we embark on this exchange about teaching, my inner-laggard could not resist the opportunity to invite ironic participants to engage in a discussion of low or no-tech teaching methods under the “Using Technology” heading. So, fellow “dancing animals” (a shout-out to Vonnegut), what sorts of low technology thrills you and engages your students? And if you expertly code-switch between the worlds of wired and unplugged, how do you decide when to engage electricity and when not to flip the switch?

For how and why I incorporate low-tech teaching into my courses, read more…

Nearly three years ago, I attended my first Teaching Professor conference and was wowed by an hour-long presentation on using low-tech activities in the college classroom. The presenters made their case brilliantly – they gave us lego to play with. Listening to fellow Ph.D.s laugh out loud as they constructed brilliant, surprising, physical answers to problems and tasks, I realized that my courses could benefit from highly-tactile, low-technology activities.

BREAKING DOWN BOUNDARIES AMONG GRADUATE STUDENTS

I use lego as an ice breaker with public affairs graduate students enrolled in my “Communication in Public Settings” class. I assemble them in teams and ask them to make ideal governments or nonprofits or inventions, depending upon the focus of that semester’s class. For example, if I’m teaching Ev Rogers’ “Diffusion of Innovations” and the semester focuses on communicating social change, I’ll have my students invent things that would positively improve the lives of some group of constituents and then talk about how they’d get people to start using their inventions. The students build impressive – possibly patentable – things out of lego. More importantly, they talk to each other as they’re creating. They “get out of their heads” for a minute and succumb to whimsy or frustration (e.g., why don’t they make more round lego?!) or both and let down their guard with their teammates. They laugh, they roll their eyes, they do all the things I need for them to do if they’re going to be comfortable taking risks with each other later in the semester.

FLIPPING THE SCRIPT ON UNDERGRADS

With my Learning Communities students, I interject old-fashioned needle-and-thread sewing a month into their first semester at Baruch College. By that time, we’ve plowed through nearly 200 pages of The Republic. No student likes The Republic – ever. A particular idea might be interesting, and – because they engage in a month-long role-playing game set in 403 B.C. Athens – potentially useful in the course, but The Republic is not fun. The students who excel in the discussions and quizzes related to The Republic are those that have mastered the art of traditional Western-style academic reading and regurgitation. However, they are frequently terrible seamstresses, as we all discover during puppet-making day.

I devote an entire class to making puppets for several reasons. First, by that point in the semester, my students are really burnt out – by The Republic and the hundreds of pages they’ve ingested in other classes. The puppet-making day is a surprising break that reinvigorates most of them. Second, by that point in the semester, the struggling students are beginning to lose faith in themselves. A month in to their college careers, they self-diagnose as “too stupid” to continue. Watching their fellow classmates struggle reminds them that we all face challenges and have the potential to persevere. It might sound silly, but puppet-making day is a great equalizer and some of the students really need that. Third, I figure everyone should know how to thread a needle and pull off a simple stitch. It’s a basic life skill and I’m willing to devote an hour to seeing that my students don’t leave Baruch without it. (OK. Finally, I really enjoy puppet shows).

In both my graduate and undergraduate courses, I use technology a great deal – from Blackboard to PowerPoint to assignments that require blogging. I thrill at the visuals I can harness to bolster my claims via the Internet. I am grateful that I can transport my students to other places and times via DVDs. I wouldn’t trade technology-centered pedagogy for a mountain of lego… But I have seen low-technology activities break down barriers and build up confidence in profound ways. For that reason, I will continue to cart tubs of lego, pipe cleaners, embroidery floss, and more, through the halls of Baruch College.

Some days, we just need to dance in the sunlight.