Over the holidays, I read this interesting article (that I somehow managed to not save somewhere) that suggested not presenting the behavioral objective to the student.
What? The madness? How will the student be engaged if they don’t know what we’re doing?
Actually, the article presented a far more authentic method for making the student aware of what was going to be taught. The student is given a task that requires the skill to complete. Not realizing this, the student attempts the task, and fails. The instructor then steps on and shows how to complete the task.
At first, I was definitely still thinking, “That’s crazy. Brilliant. But crazy.” Then, I realized it’s not. It’s natural, and it’s what I do with my math students.
I work in a tutoring center that has its own full curriculum, which means I often have students with gaps in their math or students who have learned skills in class since their program was generated. When I go to teach a new skill to a student, I ask them a question linking back to another skill. If they answer that without problem or with just a little prompting, I give them a problem using the skill I’m about to teach. If the student solves the problem without any issues, we move on to the next skill. If they get stuck, more often than not they ask me to show them how to solve it, giving me an even more authentic lead-in to my teaching, and I know the student will be engaged because they want to know how to do it.
This is something I should keep in mind as I start working on Dead Bunny media offerings. It’s a good, natural way to approach presenting new skills.
Posted by Rebecca as Teaching methods at 8:47 AM EST
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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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Boxes and Arrows recently ran a great article on Foundations of Interaction Design. The article takes various artistic concepts and analyzes interaction design against them.
My favorite part, mainly because I’d never actually thought about teaching itself as having such a thing, is the section on negative space.
Negative space
All good design disciplines have a form of negative space. In Architecture and Industrial Design it is the hollowness or the space between solids. In Graphic Design it is “white space” what is left without color, line or form, literally the white part of the paper to be printed on. Sound design looks at silence, and lighting design looks at darkness.So what is the negative of interaction?
There are many places where you can “lack” something, or more accurately there are many layers. Are we only talking about the product action? What about our action? What about the space in between either entity’s action?
Pause – So clearly a pause in time where no action is taking place by anything that is part of the interaction experience. Often in interaction design we try to fill these gaps, but maybe these gaps are useful.
Cessation of thought – What if doing nothing created a reaction from the system? Well, one student thought this up with BrainBall (http://w3.tii.se/en/index.asp?page=more&id=4) at Sweden’s Interaction Institute (http://w3.tii.se/en/). As you think less the ball moves more.
Inactivity – Doing nothing, or the product doing nothing in reaction to an action may be a negative occurrence. This differs from pause, but in this case inactivity is the reaction to activity as opposed to just a cessation of activity.
Well whatever the negative space of interaction design is, it isn’t.
If you think about it, in our teaching the negative space is wait time. I know that doesn’t really agree with the article, but it’s that point where we stop talking, and the student has the chance to process, to think, on their own. It’s our negative space because the teaching art isn’t being practiced in that space, and it’s necessary to aid in the student learning.
I don’t thionk there could be a total absence of thinking or work in the teaching negative space, but it’s certainly something to think about.
Posted by Rebecca as Teaching methods at 7:30 AM EDT
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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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As my students frequently note, I am somewhat Socratic in my teaching methods. I teach them a concept, and then as we review and practice it, I ask questions when they are lost. While they grumble about the fact I won’t just tell them what they already know, it’s quick to show me what they’re confused about so I can help clarify and it shows them that they can rely on themselves for the answers. In fact, a number of them have told me that’s how they now get through class. If they can’t remember something, they ask themselves what I would ask them, and get themselves back on track.
Being Socratic has been a wonderful tool for teaching in my current position, but I think I’ve really only developed it in the past two years or so. Of course, because I’ve relied more on it than my old teaching styles, it’s now my reflex teaching method. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s making things interesting as I create more material for Dead Bunny.
The Socratic method requires the teacher to be there asking questions, probing to help the student find their way through a skill. That’s something a blog post, a PDF quick-facts sheet, and a video tutorial cannot do. I’m still in the process of creating the first tutorial, and I think one of my biggest problem spots right now is the script. I’m used to demonstrating a skill, and then directing practice by questioning, but the video won’t allow for that for obvious reasons. Even when I teach myself how to create a more interactive learning unit, I know I won’t be in the program questioning.
I could try to predict the common questions that will come up, but I know from experience that students don’t always run into the same problems. I’d hate to throw useless questions at a student who just wants a better understanding of a skill. How do I sooth my inner Socratic teacher in this case?
So far, the best I can do is write as clearly as I can, addressing the basic steps necessary for the skill and trying to cover the more common trouble spots. It’s forcing me to teach in a more direct manner than I’ve ever taught in my life. In fact, I’m hacing to write this material from my training frame of mind instead of my teacher way of mind.
Can multimedia have a Socratic aspect to it, too? I don’t know, but I’m willing to explore and find out.
Posted by Rebecca as Teaching methods at 7:43 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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With everyone so worried about meeting the demands set forth by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it’s nice to see a state that’s looking to bring their students up to standards without making that their only academic activity.
In this changing world, it is important to help our students become masters of reading and math so they can keep up with the demands of society. In trying to prepare students to pass their test, many schools forget that the students need these basic skills to stay with them throughout school and out into the real world. Nebraska, however, is granting the teachers the freedom to teach the skills to their students, and then to assess on their own. This has led to the development of an assessment program that relies on multiple choice testing, but also includes an authentic component that can catch more than a multiple-choice assessment alone. Apparently, it really works for Nebraska.
There are a couple of things to remember. The first is that no matter what, a school’s primary goal is to educate students, to prepare them for the next level of their education and for their life. If a child has their head jammed with what they need to pass a test, instead of allowing them to authentically learn the material that will be showing up for the rest of their life, then like all information crammed for a test, the student will more than likely forget the material. The next year, the teacher is forced to not only cram new information into the student’s head, but they lose time having to refresh the lost skills. The second is that preparing children to pass assessments leads to an inaccurate picture of how those students are doing. The point of the testing is to demonstrate what level the child is actually operating at, but it often doesn’t reflect that. A student who passes a test one year might fail math the next year because of that aforementioned forgetting of what’s been crammed into their head, or even worse, they may only know how to answer test questions.
Authentic curriculum leads to more authentic assessment results, which in turn could lead to producing the effect we want in all children- that they’ve learned the skills they need to move on.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility, Teaching methods at 7:52 AM EDT
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One of our goals as a teacher is to create a sense of self-sufficience in our students. We try to help them move from dependent on us to dependent on themselves for certain bits of knowledge. We assign them a score of how well they have mastered their independence over the knowledge.
What if we were able to lead them toward a more independent, self-directed assessment model? Not only are they proving their mastery over the knowledge, but they’re also looking for acceptable levels of work from themself to reach that mastery. In the post, the students are critiquing a project and working to bring the quality of their work to a higher level, but what if this could be broadened to incorporate assessing other learning activities? Yes, there will always be students who will only do what they need to skate by and ones who will misapply the rubric, swearing they’ve done everything at the highest level because they don’t actually understand the rubric, or want the best grade for the least work, but there will also be students who can be brought to understand what the rubric is asking of them, and through critical thinking and honest appraisal bring themselves to that higher level.
It’s an interesting thought on bring out one more level of thinking, of reflecting, of being independent in students.
Found via Stephen Downes
Posted by Rebecca as Teaching methods at 7:42 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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