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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(Isn’t it funny that the blog that focuses on my primary profession and my passion is the one I’m suddenly having so much trouble writing for?)
I’m probably overly fascinated by the “E/I” (educational and informative) logo on children’s television shows. I’ve actually tried to find the criteria for a show to earn this logo since it mysteriously showed up on an Italian import that had no discernible educational content whatsoever. (If anyone knows what the criteria is, please drop me a line.)
Anyone who works with kids knows, though, that it isn’t just the shows designed to teach kids that actually teach them. I’ll go to show one of my students something, and they’ll just do it or be able to answer my question. I smile inwardly as they proudly tell me about some section of a video game where they had to do something related to get past the section, or about how some cartoon character used the same thing to solve a problem. It may not have been the intention of the game or cartoon to teach the skill, but it happened anyway.
I’ve been thinking about that while playing at creating my first attempts at educational programming. Granted, right now I’m still working on the more obviously educational projects, but I’m also quietly putting thought and time toward other, less obviously educational projects. What’s the line? What’s the right balance between a blatant educational experience and a shrouded teaching moment?
The grad school I keep trying to make myself apply for has suddenly sent me a newsletter. I’m thinking I should take advantage of it to hunt down a real person in the department so I can talk to them and see if that program really is a good fit for me so I can just make my decision once and for all. I’m really just too fascinated by educational media to let it go.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized, Experiential Learning, Games at 8:23 AM EDT
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I’ve always seen myself more as a facilitative teacher than anything else. I think that really comes through in my teaching style. I directly teach the topic once, and then help my students find their way through the material, offering hints and asking questions to steer them toward the right answer.
Having been a museum educator, and being a math teacher now, I find myself drawn to “object-based learning”, the object being some bit of knowledge that can be delivered in a number of settings, combined with other topics, approached different ways.
I’d never really thought of what that meant in museum terminology until I read the following from George Siemen’s Connectivism blog:
…An expert (the curator) exists in the artifacts displayed, resources reviewed in class, concepts being discussed. But she’s behind the scenes providing interpretation, direction, provocation, and yes, even guiding. A curatorial teacher acknowledges the autonomy of learners, yet understands the frustration of exploring unknown territories without a map. A curator is an expert learner. Instead of dispensing knowledge, he creates spaces in which knowledge can be created, explored, and connected. While curators understand their field very well, they don’t adhere to traditional in-class teacher-centric power structures. A curator balances the freedom of individual learners with the thoughtful interpretation of the subject being explored. While learners are free to explore, they encounter displays, concepts, and artifacts representative of the discipline. Their freedom to explore is unbounded. But when they engage with subject matter, the key concepts of a discipline are transparently reflected through the curatorial actions of the teacher.
Posted by Rebecca as Experiential Learning, Teaching methods at 7:30 AM EDT
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Let’s start with a description of a studio classroom:
Studio classrooms are not all the same, but all share common elements. They involve longer, fewer, class sessions with focused, intense, student activity. Any disconnect between laboratory and lecture time is absent because lab and lecture are combined. In fact, lectures are de-emphasized or eliminated altogether. Instead, students work together to solve in-depth problems and answer questions, sometimes moving from one workstation to another. The interactive classroom promotes holistic skills, including thinking, inquiry, creativity and reflection by students, frequently involving peer review and critiquing. (Source)
It sounds like the kind of space I’d love to be teaching in. In fact, it reflects the world I used to teach in to a certain degree.
I’d never head of studio classrooms until a couple of weeks ago when I read a post on “flow” in a studio classroom. While that was interesting, I found something else more interesting. When I was a museum educator, I rarely had problems with classroom management issues because I had the kids fully involved in working on projects. Occasionally, I’d stop to give them information or directions, but most of our time was spent doing something. So, I found it interesting to note that this teacher, trying to migrate the class to a studio set-up, noted that classroom management issues were minimal because the students were engaged in their projects.
What does this tell me? Well, even though I ran a pretty easy-to-manage traditional class during my student teaching years ago, it tells me that students are more likely to not need to be “managed” if you can get them involved in an activity. Sure, you’ll always have one or two who either just can’t focus or feel a little silly that day, but if you have them engaged in activity, you have a much better chance of minimizing unfortunate incidents.
Perhaps I should see if there are any studio classroom set-ups I can fall in with. I think it would be a fascinating setting to teach in!
Posted by Rebecca as Experiential Learning at 8:00 AM EDT
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I’ve decided I really need to move from tutoring (my current flavor of informal education) to something more technologically relevant to my preferred teaching method- facilitating.
I really enjoy being an information node, but I know that I’m just one node in a student’s diverse experiences. I may be just what they need to learn the skills they need, or I may be able to offer supplementary activities to help them build the skills they’re already working on. This is probably what has always led me down the informal learning route (despite everyone trying to push me into a classroom);
While I enjoy the face-to-face, I often feel like I can’t reach or do as much because I’m only affecting a small population, and they’re often just taking from me. I never get to see what I’ve taught blended with what the student has learned elsewhere to create a peer-teaching moment. I get to see one moment in time, instead of the larger picture that results.
I want to see students’ personal learning environments. I want to see their e-portfolios if they create one. I want to be part of a student’s Rip-Mix-Burn process, but I’m not positioned to help with that because I’m not working in that type of environment myself. Skills-wise, I’m armed and ready to assume a facilitator’s role in a student’s creation of their own learning environment, but my experience is woefully lacking.
Step one should be to facilitate my own rip-mix-burn activities. Step two should be to figure out how to maneuver myself into a position to help others create their own rip-mix-burn activities.
Suggested reading
- I can’t teach properly (Just because it’s so very good, and so true.)
- Signal vs. Noise (Just because it’s interesting and has led to some sleepless nights as I try to decide what it means for me)
Posted by Rebecca as e-learning, Experiential Learning, Learning methods at 7:33 AM EST
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Today is really going to just be about sharing some of the posts I’ve been reading lately. The other day I was thinking about the new class of educational toys. Today I’m thinking about computer and video games. This might be because I have my interview with the Art Institute this morning to discuss whether or not their Interactive Media program is a good fit for the shift I’m trying to push myself through. I suspect by the time it’s all said and done, she’s going to recommend I find a more technical school…but we’ll see.
Okay…recent games reading:
- Racial ambiguity in games- Like Mrs. Dewey, it appears that games are starting to feature characters that are designed in such a way that most people can find something to identify with. I don’t know if I’ve ever thought to identify myself with Mario or Lara Croft, but I think this is just awesome. Designing with multiculturalism in mind can open up what you can do with a game, but at the same time, it also runs the risk of breaking down cultural boundaries, and potentially making it okay to generate a homogeneous culture instead of celebrating what makes various cultures unique.
- Hotel Dusk: Novel or Game?- I’ve been working on figuring out the Change Your Own Adventure development process for what I hope will become a series of games where math will help determine your path through the story, so finding out about this one excited me. I’m going to have to see if I can pick up a copy to see how they did it. One of the potential benefits of a game like this is that it can either breed an interest in reading in kids who wouldn’t normally read for fun, or it could pull avid readers into gaming (thereby encouraging them to become more social).
- Today’s Homework: Make Good Games- I remember when I was in middle school, my life science teacher thought it would be fun for everyone to create games designed to help us study for a test. It was a lot of fun. We each worked on our own, and I think mine was a version of Monopoly with a trivia element to it. It was awesome because I got to design something, and just creating the game helped me study for the test. When I got to make the box of reading games for one of my teacher prep classes, I thought that was pretty cool, too. I love playing games. I love solving puzzles. I love creating treasure hunts. And I love creating games, even if my experience up until this CYOA one has been low-tech.
- Game over- Play again?- Okay, so I really like this one! When I was a kid playing Donkey Kong Junior and Mario, it was all about how wonderful the games were for teaching things like problem solving and hand-eye coordination for us less athletically gifted kids. Now, games are hailed for being able to draw people together socially as they work together on MMORPGs or through xBox Live. Even the Wii is already being praised for getting gamers off their couches. (And if you have yet to play with a Wii, I highly recommend it. It is more fun than any one person should be allowed to have indoors!) The one unsung skill taught by gaming, though, is the ability to make mistakes and be completely fine with it because you know you’ll get an other chance. It’s actually a subskill of the problem solving skill. You try something. You die. You think, ‘So next time, I’ll try this instead.’ Which you do. It kills you. Finally, you figure out the right solution, and you keep going. No fuss. No stress over doing it “wrong”. It’s just an attempt. Smart gamers carry this skill, like the others, in their back pocket to help them get through real life. And it’s true.
Gaming isn’t a panacea to all of education’s ills, but it can be great for reinforcing skill development. And I’m starting to see why I’m gravitating back toward it, just from an educator’s perspective.
Posted by Rebecca as Experiential Learning, Problem Solving, Games, Link Dump at 7:31 AM EST
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As my thoughts on my future try to narrow in on a plan and a back-up plan for my career shift, I’m finding my reading shifting away from e-portfolios and adult-centric e-learning to information architecture/literacy and K-12 media and games. The more I read, the more I think about things, the longer I’m at my current job, the more I want to get involved in creating products to help students acquire and review math skills. (Actually, I want to be involved in more than just math, but it’s what’s got me fired up for so many reasons.) Right now, I’m just trying to figure out how to position myself to move into that kind of work.
It’s quite the time to try to figure out how to shift to a different informal education niche. The education industry as a whole is going through a rather large shift that may involve sliding in and out of paradigms as it grows to accommodate the accelerated changes in our society. Children are able to reach out and learn in many different ways and from many different sources. With a little training, they can learn what sources can be trusted, and what sources should either be reinforced with information from other sources or discarded altogether.
But I digress from my actual reason for writing today. My point is that children love to explore. They love to learn initially. They like to copy what grown-ups do because they know that’s part of becoming a grown-up. They mimic. They make knowledge their own. They find their own ways of doing things.
More often than not, they do it at a rate that is faster than their parents are able to adapt to the current new world order. Think about it. I’m a member of the video game generation. While my parents enjoyed sitting down to play favorite games when we first got the Coleco, I was the one who played nearly every game we had. When I was given a Nintendo right after they came out, Mom and Dad had their games, but again, I was the one who played nearly all of them. Now, they IM me for help on the computer (even though Mom is far more computer savvy than she realizes). Along with my technological toys, I had my Fisher Price kitchen so I could pretend to cook like my mom. I had my blocks so I could try to make my own buildings. I had no end of art supplies so I could create my own works of art.
I had access to toys my parents couldn’t have imagined when they were kids, but they helped me be able to successfully navigate my way into the grown-up world I had to deal with. Today’s children are now doing the same thing- except their toys are kid-friendly computers, cell phones, and other technological toys. Where I learned to design with my Crayola caddy, they’re using Crayola products that can do far more than my crayons and markers ever could. Where I learned to write BASIC programs and draw in Paint (both of which i did toward the end of elementary school), these kids are learning their way around WYSIWYG editors and kid-friendly programs to create with a computer. Many of them move on to harder programs by the end of middle school.
The kids show the grown-ups how to use the “basic” technology toys in use. It’s because it’s the world they’re growing up into. They become familiar with these now so that they can be prepared to quickly adapt to newer technologies as they develop.
Are we stealing their childhood from them by allowing them access to these types of toys, or are we allowing them to explore, to play, to discover?
Inspired by this article
Posted by Rebecca as Experiential Learning, Problem Solving, Games at 8:08 AM EST
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“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”- Mark Twain
I think this quote perfectly illustrates any form of informal and lifelong learning drive. We have what we learned in school. We go out into the world and start building our own knowledge (even while we are in school) based off what we’ve learned, or we learn something completely unrelated.
That’s the strength of both informal learning and lifelong learning. “Schooling”, at its best, gives us a way to learn. We may modify that method to better suit how we work, but it teaches us the basics.
Once armed with a way to learn, we’re able to open our minds and explore anything that catches our fancy.
Posted by Rebecca as Experiential Learning at 8:44 AM EST
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I’m spending much of this month working out the process for a game I want to include in my portfolio for grad school applications, and it’s causing me to do way too much thinking about this site and how I want to grow it over the next year.
Specifically, I got to thinking more about the specific structure of the tutorials and quests I want to develop for the site. You see, for the site to successfully accomplish my objective, it will have to be able to complete the whole teach-assess-reteach-reassess cycle on its own, without the benefit of human intuition. I’m not into artificial intelligence, but I think I don’t have to be to make it all work on a superficial level.
You see, I’ve been reconnecting with video games (oh, how I have desperately missed them!), and I’m learning something very important. Teach-assess-reteach-reassess isn’t something that takes place only in a classroom. In fact, it’s something of how nonformal and informal learning work. You pick up a skill in a game. You then apply said skill. After being killed repeatedly because you can’t get the hang out of said skill, you find the tutorial area of the game to practice the skill again, or you find a resource to explain the skill more clearly. Then you go back to the game and correctly use the skill.
It makes thinking about both my game and the site redesign a bit more easier to plan out.
Posted by Rebecca as Experiential Learning, Games at 7:54 AM EST
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I’ve probably shared this before, but when I was a nanny, I had a child in my care who hated reading. An avid reader myself, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around this concept and worked with the parents and his teachers to try to get him into reading. We did flash cards for outlaw words. We got him books on topics he liked (his bug book was particularly frightening).This child was also a huge Pokemon fan, one-third of the reason why I couldn’t escape being inundated by a show that completely annoyed me. Every afternoon, he, his younger brother and I would sit down for half an hour and watch Ash and Pikachu pointlessly battle creatures. One day, he excitedly sat down in front of the television. His parents had taped an episode for him, and he really liked the episode. As a result, I’ve seen “Island of the Giant Pokemon” more times than any self-respecting adult ever should.
At first, it really annoyed me. Then I noticed what he was doing. There is a scene in the episode where the Pokemon talk among themselves, planning to go find their humans. To anyone just listening to the episode (as I often do with the cartoons I willingly watch), the conversation was a combination of “pikachu”, “bulbasaur”, “charmander”, “ekans”, and “koffing”. However, someone was very kind. The scene is captioned so the conversation can be understood by those of us who don’t speak Pokemon.
My young charge would sit and read those captions, often pausing the scene so he had time to sound out words. And every time we watched the episode, he would entertain himself by reading the captions again. His baby brother found the whole thing very funny, but I was quite interested. The boy who hated reading was addicted to Pokemon.
It seems to me that I’ve read where other education professionals have noticed this activity with other children as well. I’m thinking that it is worth the effort to turn on captions for a low reader’s favorite shows.
Posted by Rebecca as Experiential Learning, Learning methods at 8:07 AM EST
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