Scene: My workplace, any day of the week.
Me: What do we do next?
Student: (looks at the desk, the floor, the clock on the wall, anywhere but the problem we’re working on)
Me: What do you think?
Student: (tentatively) I don’t know. (says exactly the right answer) I don’t know. Why are you asking me this? I don’t want to work on this any more. I don’t know any of this.
Me: But you just got it.
Student: Really?
It often amazes me how many of my students are afraid to speak up when I ask them how to do something, especially since I work with them in what is essentially a one-to-one environment. They really are afraid that they have no earthly idea what’s going on, that they’re stupid. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to make their best guess, despite the fact that when they stop to think about it, they either know what to do or they land on the right track.
They’re so afraid of making a mistake (either out of fear of sounding stupid or because of a hyper-critical teacher at school) that they really don’t want to think about things they aren’t sure about to begin with. That fear, I fear, holds way too many of my bright students from reaching their academic potential.
Fear is a funny thing. It can motivate you to put forth effort where you might not care otherwise. It can also cause you to hide from challenges you are more than capable of facing and defeating. It’s that second kind of fear that keeps my students from taking a chance because they’re afraid of making a mistake.
I’m trying to help them see that making mistakes is a good thing. (You’d think they’d get the message by now with all the mistakes I make.) Making mistakes allows a teacher to see where a student isn’t understanding the material, which leads to the teacher helping the student understand and move past that. Making mistakes is part of accommodation, which permits us to learn more. Making mistakes often leads to innovation and invention.
To paraphrase Thomas Edison, “I didn’t fail. I just learned several ways how not to do something.” That’s really all a mistake is, a way to not do something.
Inspired by The Many Errors in Thinking About Mistakes
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Experiential Learning at 7:40 AM EST
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Konrad Glogowski often shares what he does in class with his students, and shares how he approaches various issues. The other day I read his format for creating learning experiences, and I really like it. It’s another tool for accessing those higher levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy.
He has set the cycle Discover-Define-Immerse-Build-Contribute to help his students explore topics more than they might during normal research projects. It’s great because each step is designed to encourage the student to become the literal expert and to create from the expertise.
I think this not only shows a way to make research projects more authentic and impacting, but it encourages that love of learning that we try to inspire in our students.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Teaching methods at 7:34 AM EDT
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For those of us who subscribe to Bloom’s taxonomy, one of the ultimate expressions of a student’s learning is synthesis, the creation of their own work based on the learned concept. This is actually the basis for authentic assessment, and a great argument against testing. When the student can take what they’ve learned and apply it to a personal project, that is the true measure of how well the student has learned the concept.
We’re so bogged down in this concept that the only way to prove students are learning is in easily quantifiable tests that may or may not have any actual bearing on demonstrating whether or not a student really knows the material.
really, what we’re seeing from students outside of school reflects this. They approach new applications, new technologies, and within minutes have often figured out the basics well enough to exert their personality over it. These persistent users of Web 2.0 take what they read and turn it into their web presence, expressing themselves visually and verbally. The evidence of their learning is on display to the world. We’d do well to consider this when setting up learning and assessing tasks for them.
The most sincere way to determine whether or not a student has mastered a concept is to give them the opportunity to apply that knowledge through thecreation of a project.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Teaching methods at 8:43 AM EDT
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My reading lately has had an interesting theme showing up over and over- We aren’t teaching students well.
No, that’s unfair. It’s not that we aren’t teaching them well. It’s more that we aren’t giving them the full set of skills they’ll need to survive once they move past their schooling. We make them sit in seats quietly and take notes, read dry (somewhat inaccurate, highly outdated) textbooks, and teach them how to regurgitate information in response to familiar situations.
And this somehow is supposed to enable them to apply what they learned when they walk out of school.
Our total knowledge is more than just the facts we cram into our heads to pass a test (those same facts that fall out a day or three after the test because they were never given a fair chance to sink in). It’s what we do, what we apply in situations because we recognize patterns. We should be teaching kids to see pieces of a puzzle, and recognize what bit of gained knowledge would best help them fill in the missing bits.
That should be the point in most classes, enabling students with what some teachers call a “toolbox” of skills to tackle a problem. That’s the point of cumulative research projects that have become so popular in the local high schools. The point of group work is to put students into teams where everyone’s gained knowledge can interact to figure out how to best approach a problem. The point of internships, volunteer work, and work studies is to help students both gain new knowledge and to learn how to apply their own knowledge.
Are you seeing a pattern here? We shouldn’t be teaching students to regurgitate. We should be teaching them how to recognize the patterns that would suggest when to use a particular skill or combination of skills. Rote learning is so twentieth century, so let’s move into the twenty-first by encouraging students to connect what they are learning to practical applications, to solving problems, to thinking critically.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Knowledge Management, Teaching methods at 7:38 AM EDT
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This post from Joyful Jubilant Learning really resonated with me. I am a fan of peer teaching. My own roots in teaching started because I shared what I knew with classmates as a tutor, or just to help them get past an assignment, so when I see my kids start explaining something to each other, it warms my heart.
Peer teaching is one of those authentic assessment methods that is so often overlooked. The idea is if you can teach a skill to someone else, then you have truly learned that skill yourself. It’s true. Even more than proving your own mastery, it also builds your own self-confidence when you realize that you know it well enough to share it with someone else.
Being able to share a newly learned skill is about reinforcing your own understanding of the skill. It’s about building your communication skills. It’s about being an active part of your community.
(The rest of the post is quite good, but I love anything that draws me back toward thinking about the uses of peer teaching.)
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Teaching methods at 8:05 AM EDT
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For a while now, I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the PLE and trying to determine how to set one up for myself that will be of some use to me. It turns out I just needed to have my head straightened out.
A good PLE allows the learner to do three critical things:
- Gathering Information
- Processing Information
- Acting on the Learning
Well, I read my Google Reader off and on throughout the day. Any feed I think is worth reading is in there. It covers not only my professional interests, but also my hobbies (with a few fun blogs thrown in because everyone should have blogs they read for fun). I maintain both a del.icio.us and a Furl account to keep track of links I want to refer back to (I also use the star feature in Reader for posts I’m not quite ready to add to del.icio.us, but don’t want to lose track of). I have a well-used library account (I have my number memorized because I log into my account way too frequently). I even have a long log of e-books linked in my EverNote so I can read them when I have time.
I then blog what I read. Or it comes out in one of my writing notebooks. Or it comes out in my EverNote. I might discuss what I read with colleagues or students or friends. It’s rare for me to read or watch something and not do something with what I learned from it. I guess I process and act on my learning together, because honestly, that’s how I work. I have to work things out in order to fully process them. (Unsurprisingly, I’m a haptic learner.)
Ultimately, your PLE consists of what you’re taking in and how you’re working with that new knowledge to make it part of your knowledge base.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning at 7:33 AM EDT
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An article showed up early last week that declared that today’s children just aren’t as intelligent as preceding generations. The concern, if I’m reading this correctly, seems to stem from an assumption that a child who does not score well in school or on a particular test can never be educated. This concern seems to assume that any number ascertained from a moment in a child’s life will accurately describe a child’s situation for all time. (I work with a mix of bright and average students. It may take some work on the part of the “average” student’s part, but generally I can find a way to explain the material so that they are just as capable of succeeding their mastery tests as my “bright” students. But I’m in a very lucky situation where it’s a small student to teacher ratio.)
This was in turn followed by an assertion that only those with high IQs should go to college while everyone else should focus on vocational school. (I had a good laugh at this one. I have a high IQ. I aced AP Calculus in high school and then turned around and failed Physics I in college. It had more to do with not being able to reconcile the fact that my professor, TA, and textbook were all saying different things than anything else.) On the other hand, the article did point out that there are alternate ways to acquire valid experience. It’s just too elitist in how it states it (for my taste, anyway.)
The third article goes back to the lower levels of education by giving us the statistics on federal aid given to developing the skills and talents of “gifted” children. The thought here seems to be that by taking the time to make sure children with lower IQs have a fair chance to master basci skills and knowledge, the children with higher IQs are left to atrophy when their own abilities should be cultivated, too. (The article also suggests at one point that “gifted” children, of which I was one, don’t bother to challenge themselves academically because they get the ego strokes they require on a more basic academic track. Please my above notes for my own feelings on that matter. I always took what looked interesting to me, and even if I didn’t do terribly well at it, I kept at it until I understood it. I have a few friends and coworkers who tell that makes me a rarity. I think it just makes me naturally curious and persistent.)
Fortunately, these three articles are presented as opinions. While I can respect this person’s take on the situation with our education, as a gifted person and a teacher, I think the author is off-base. I’ve seen kids who couldn’t do a simple addition problem go on to lead incredible projects in one of their recreational activities. I’ve known students who couldn’t name a single element off the Periodic table who spent part of their year in camps and workshops for talented youth musicians. Maybe the student is weak in one area, but they more than likely have another area where they shine. To shut them down as hopeless because they can’t pass one class, because one test said they probably couldn’t do anything, robs that child of any chance to become the best person they can.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Responsibility at 8:27 AM EST
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I loved this post because i know how many people will be up in arms over the very thought.
Somehow, teaching students to use the internet safely has become one of those topics that seems to live a dark color with sex education, drug education, and stranger education. In this new millennium, we are still suffering from a heavy dose of, “If we don’t talk about it, students will never know it exists.”
Wrong.
In this day and age, students are being bombarded with learning opportunities from every direction. The schools only see them a smaller part of the day, and then they are watching television. They’re listening to the radio. They’re hanging out with long-distance friends online. If you aren’t talking with them about “controversial” topics, you can bet someone else is.
My point here is that not talking about something doesn’t make it go away, and taking the time to talk with a young person about any of these topics will actually help because they’ll know how you feel on the topic, and you’ll know that at some point, you had some input on what they know about the topic.
Don’t hide it. Don’t tell them not to do it. Educate them about it. Educate them about the potential consequences. Enable them to make an informed decision, and then trust them to make it. It’s part of growing up, and not giving them this opportunity may actually rob them of the ability to handle issues later on in life.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning at 7:44 AM EST
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I spent the weekend (Actually, I started during the snow days last week.) curled up with a e-book or two, and one of them was George Siemens’ Knowing Knowledge.
I really liked how the book itself was laid out and presented, because it visually brought home some of the main points of the book.
Most of the information was fairly familiar, but seeing it all compressed into one space helped drive a lot of it home.
My take-aways:
- Knowledge is organization, not structure.
- Somehow or other, this actually inspired a massive tagging project. I’ve never really been much of a tagger because I couldn’t wrap my mind around the whole taxonomy/folksonomy thing. Reading this one line immediately spurred me to reexamine my attitudes and practices regarding tagging.
- Repackaging is the personalization of the knowledge created by others.
- Remixing is hot right now. It has been for months now. I haven’t really explored it much for myself, but I know I need. When the need for remixing or mashing up is described this way, it really illustrates the connectivist role of remixing, and I think it even provides a strong argument for connectivism.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Experiential Learning, Learning methods, Information Architecture at 7:48 AM EST
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It’s not quite what you think. I’ve had something of a long-standing fascination with how Tradable Card Games (TCGs) promote accidental learning in teenagers. (To give you an idea of how long I’ve been pursuing this, I started when they were Collectible Card Games, or CCGs.)
One of my roommates works at a game shop that is considering organizing a Pokemon League on the weekends, and last night he asked if I’d be interested in helping out. I’ll admit it, I was intrigued. Five years ago, I was a co-Gym Leader for the Pokemon League in a friend’s game shop. For as much as I’m not excited about Pokemon (especially in light of what happened to the cartoon this year), I have some very, very fond memories of my year and a half as Gym Leader.
Being a Gym Leader was interesting, because it allowed me to watch how playing Pokemon affected these kids. For my League, it was incredible. The core kids weren’t afraid to approach newer League players and mentor them, both in Pokemon and in the workings of the League. Trading was taken very seriously; the kids would often grab the most recent list of the value of the cards to make sure everyone was getting a fair deal. Even more interesting, a kid who wouldn’t even look at the list was left out of the trading because the other kids were afraid the kid wouldn’t deal fairly. I would love to keep an eye on these kids, just because I think they’re all going to have some strong business skills (most of them are freshman in college this year).
Another aspect I like about Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh both is that I’ve watched kids who complain about not being good at wither reading or math become completely engaged in both aspects of the games. “I hate school because I can’t read well or do math well” gave way very quickly to a kid asking to read the card their opponent just played and trying to keep track of their life points. It’s down and dirty, but any way you can get a kid to practice basic skills is a happy thing in my book.
These kids are also learning to interact with other kids. The old stigma of the anti-social gamer goes out the window when confronted by eighteen teenagers. There were friendships created through the League, and there were some mortal enemies created, but they learned how to control their seething hatred inside the game shop because I had no tolerance for it. They figured out how to work out conflicts without involving us grown-ups. They took the initiative to make sure new kids were absorbed into the culture, thereby encouraging the newcomers to keep coming back.
I realize I’m sitting here talking myself back into being a Gym Leader, if for no other reason than to continue my observations and see how kids in a highly technical area in a quickly evolving world continue the behaviors I saw in my ranchland students.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Games at 9:18 AM EST
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