Shift Happens
Posted: March 6, 2013 Filed under: First 5 Days, Inquiry, Pedagogy 4 CommentsThis year was a big shift for students in our class. We made a deliberate shift from textbook learning to a much more inquiry based, authentic learning classroom focus. The shift was a challenge for many students.
Overheard in the fall,
“Can’t we just do worksheets in math?”
Overheard yesterday,
“I’m so excited. Tomorrow we have a double math period!”
Perhaps the First 5 Days really takes 5 months. This is due in large part to my PLN in the Twitterverse for helping me stay the course and keeping the focus on the moral imperative.
Why Go BYOD?
Posted: August 18, 2012 Filed under: Pedagogy, Technology and Software 2 Comments
Presented By: OnlineColleges.net
Can you teach 21C skills without technology?
Posted: February 17, 2012 Filed under: Critical Thinking, Inquiry, Literacy, Pedagogy, Technology and Software Leave a commentRevolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies – it happens when society adopts new behaviours.
– Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, p. 160
So my colleague Cat Lee posted this on Twitter a while back, and it started me thinking. Right away I wanted to answer, “Yes” then thought that a question like this deserves a lot more critical thought. The question asks us to separate behaviour and learning from hardware. I’m okay with that.
With that in mind, what are the skills necessary to be a 21st century contemporary learner? There are more than enough lists to choose from and I don’t think any one particular set of skills can (or should) be ranked higher or lower than any other. Three general areas keep coming up over and over,
- Foundational Knowledge
- Meta-Knowledge
- Humanistic knowledge
Students working in tomorrow’s marketplace are going to require creative and critical thinking skills, a broad inter-disciplinary base and they will need to be able to play well with others. I suppose these could all be taught to some degree of effectiveness without technology. I’m just not entirely sure that’s the best plan of attack.
If you can be replaced by software, perhaps you should be
Posted: February 15, 2012 Filed under: Critical Thinking, Inquiry, Pedagogy Leave a commentThat seems like a pretty harsh thing to say. It seems harsh until you give it a little thought. If you think teaching is just about dispensing knowledge in measure doses so that it can be measured on a standardized test, then perhaps you should be replaced by software. Let’s face it, software can do it cheaper and longer than you can. Software is available 24/7, you’re not.
The good news is that inquiry based teaching will never become an endangered species. This isn’t the information age any more, it’s the knowledge age. Information is everywhere. It’s ubiquitous. Everything I need to know is accessible through my phone or the nearest wireless hub. Teachers are need to help students with the critical skills necessary to make sense of on-demand information. Teachers help students move from consumers to creators along the path of information to knowledge to wisdom. Software can’t do that by itself.
Let’s call it a “spark” and not a “hook”
Posted: February 7, 2012 Filed under: Critical Thinking, Literacy, Pedagogy Leave a commentWe continue to look for ways to engage all of our learners. We look to provide multiple entry points to learning in an effort to differentiate our instruction. Something bugs me about the language we sometimes use.
A spark is something that gets our attention and begins the inquiry process.
A hook is something that lures unsuspecting fish into the frying pan.
Don’t even get me started on the magic bullet.
Teaching the creativity out of students
Posted: February 6, 2012 Filed under: Curriculum ideas, Literacy, Pedagogy 3 CommentsWe had a great conversation today about long term and short term learning goals. Some of us framed long term learning as unit goals, others as end of grade learning. A few even wondered about long term goals being defined in lifetime terms. It was a pretty interesting couple of minutes of conversation connecting short term goals to long term goals.
When we broke down some of short term writing goals it became clear to some that these just weren’t fun. While they may have been convenient to assess, they certainly couldn’t be fun for the student. Of course these were just samples and a skilled teacher can do wonders, even with the driest of expectations.
Students come to us as natural storytellers and writers. As a long term goal, that’s what I want these students to become. Looking at some of the expectations presented as learning outcomes seemed to do very little to promote the joy of writing.
It’s the difference between the art and the science of teaching. I think we have to keep some of those really long term goals in mind during our planning. It seems a bit short sighted just to plan for the end of a unit or even the end of the grade. Perhaps we need a few 20 year goals to remind us of the bigger picture.
Students are not a level!
Posted: February 1, 2012 Filed under: Pedagogy 1 CommentI hear it all the time, “That student is a level 3”. It has now become painful to hear. Students are not a level. They are not a data point. If you insist on this grading practice, at least word it correctly.
Students perform at a level.
If you can’t see the difference then I suggest you stop whatever you are doing and read Mindset by Carol Dweck.
Yoda Was an Introvert
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: Critical Thinking, Literacy, Pedagogy Leave a commentIs extroversion a disability? Extroverts are praised because their actions are immediate and, well, they sound like they know what they are doing. Extroverts earn respect by being immediate and (often) loud. Susan Cain begins her book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” explaining how extroversion became the cultural ideal. Cain writes, “Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness—is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.”
Introverts on the other hand take the time to absorb the conversation and reflect before answering. I don’t know of any practicing Zen extroverts. Yoda for example, was an introvert. Mastering skills and reflecting on new thinking takes time. Yoda knew this in the swamps of Dagobah, Luke did not. He was impatient. As a teacher are you more like Yoda or the impatient version of Luke? Extroverts might make good used care sales people, however I wouldn’t necessarily categorize them as good thinkers.
Think about how we are teaching our students. Are we allowing that half of our class to work as reflective thinkers? Is this even reflected in the learning skills we report on?
Code Literacy
Posted: January 30, 2012 Filed under: Critical Thinking, Curriculum ideas, Literacy, Pedagogy, Technology and Software Leave a commentMight the idea of having students be fluent in coding be short sighted? Based on how the idea can be misinterpreted as digital literacy and coding becoming a form of writing. I would like to point out as many have before, that digital literacy is not about knowing computers, but is often understood as that. I’m not against students learning code and how things work. In the classroom I taught students some HTML and I’m still a big fan of LOGO. These were not taught as an end goal however. They were a way to get at a critical thinking processes.
The short sightedness lies in the idea that todays programming code will be around forever. Let’s ask those that spent time in the 1970’s programming on data cards. Invest in teaching the ideas of code programming and less time in thinking that if I know how to program in a certain code I will be guaranteed work in the foreseeable future. I might just stick with teaching simple flow charts.
In Praise of Slow
Posted: January 24, 2012 Filed under: Literacy, Pedagogy 2 Comments“Slow down, you move too fast.
You got to make the morning last.”
– Paul Simon
Can we really get more done by slowing down? Sometimes I think we can. I know when conversations slow down we can process ideas in a more thorough fashion. I think we can teach the same way as well.
What’s the point in collecting reams of writing, carting it home, marking it up and repeating the process a day later? What if we just slowed down, provided meaningful, timely feedback and marked work when it was completed to the best of a students ability? Slow down to move ahead faster. Take the first 20 days at the beginning of a school year or a term and work on routines and building student stamina through a Daily 5 type program. It will pay dividends later on.
Sometimes I think we get caught up with doing things too quickly. I don’t know about you, but I seldom do a good job when I’m rushed. When I meet with friends I don’t want race through things. I want to enjoy their company. I probably don’t spend enough time with them anyway. I have one friend who seems to be living life at breakneck speed. I realize that it’s all a matter of perception, but it still gets me a little anxious.
My buddy Brian reminded me that we both have copies of Carl Honoré’s In Praise of Slow. Neither of us have finished it yet. We’re taking it slow.
Changing Views 