A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
Yesterday, I was in a meeting with a parent and one of my students, (why do teachers have parent meetings about a teenage student’s education and not have the student there too?)
The parent observantly noted that although her son could be physically in a room, he could often ‘disconnect’ and be elsewhere in his mind. For him to be more successful, he would need to engage more in what was going on. I told him, with all honesty, that I too had that problem to the point that my parents worried that I might have been on drugs (I wasn’t). It took until my Grade 13 year (Ontario, Canada) to recognize that I needed to be a participant in the classroom in order to ‘stay connected’.
As I was talking my student interrupted and said, “I just had a flash of insight, I’m a mop not a sponge!”
He got it! And today he proved it. He was a fully engaged participant in my Math lesson. I can hear myself in upcoming classes, “Remember to be the mop”.
“Metaphors may create realities for us, especially social relations. A metaphor may thus be the guide for future actions.” George Lakoff & Mark Johnson
“The more we understand metaphor, the more we understand ourselves.” Dan Pink
We try to get ‘all the way down’ to the bottom of things when really what we need is insight into things. [Uhhhg! A perfect case-in-point: I just finished deleting an overdone, unnecessary paragraph describing this.]
We don’t need to ‘fix’ as much as we need to understand… (deeply, not literally).
We must dance to the music, not count the bars, or get to the final note.
Metaphors are the foundation of our thoughts. They assemble ideas, they construct meaning, they build understanding. They create learning.
In schools we tend to be so literal and focused on what is ‘Right’ or ‘True’. Metaphors help define us, they help us create meaning… and they even help us identify who we are, and what is important to us.
Jeg går en Tur – A self portrait by Lasse Gjertsen
Allow students to determine what they need to learn, and then enable students to manage their own learning activities?
I recently started a wiki space for my Grade 8 Science classes called Science Alive!
The concept is to let students choose their own topic to explore, and then demonstrate learning on all the levels of Blooms Revised Taxonomy.
It has been exciting starting this project… and scary too!
I have been developing a rather critical blog post, looking at my own attempt at creating and using this wiki in my class. I have told myself time and again that I have bitten off more than I can chew, and that I am expecting too much from my Grade 8′s.
I asked my students to ‘start’ looking into their chosen subjects this weekend. Before dinner tonight (Sunday Night) I checked the ‘Recent History’ of Science Alive and saw no changes for the weekend other than one on Friday afternoon. I have to admit to being disappointed.
Well I just came back (at 9pm) and I got to meet Joyce.
So, what happens when you:
Allow students to determine what they need to learn, and then enable students to manage their own learning activities?**
Have a look at what Katie and Sara did this weekend: Meet Joyce.
(**See the Instructional Stategy Development section in this Bonnie Skaalid paper.)
Originally posted: April 2nd, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
From my post:
“I have told myself time and again that I have bitten off more than I can chew, and that I am expecting too much from my Grade 8′s.”
Yesterday I got to hear Alan November speak again. I couldn’t make his early session, but arrived just at the end of it, then sat with him for a few minutes before his afternoon session. He seemed inspired by some of the really great projects that teachers were doing. One interesting comment that he made was that, during their sharing session, time-and-again yet another teacher would come up to share what they were doing with their classes and two key ideas would emerge:
1. Teachers felt like their projects were not good enough, or that they could have/should have done more with it. (The subject of a future post.)
2. Teachers were surprised by what students were capable of, or what they accomplished.
The afternoon session catered mostly to teachers that had not seen him before, and although I really enjoyed it, what struck a chord with me were these two points Alan and I talked about for all of 2-3 minutes.
Do we set the bar too low for our students?
If we are continually surprised by what our students are capable of when we empower them with dynamic ways to demonstrate their learning, then isn’t that an indication that we should be expecting more?
I can’t help but think that we should expect more… and that perhaps this is a motivation issue. I don’t mean that “kids today aren’t motivated”! I think that we just don’t motivate them enough, we don’t offer them opportunities to feel empowered about learning, we don’t let them learn for the love of learning. Instead we teach them things that will fit on a test, things that will ‘prepare them for the next grade’.
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For a real-life example, I need not look any further than my own motivation in school.
My university marks looked like this:
I loved the course: A
I liked the course and the prof was engaging: A
I liked the course: B
The prof was engaging: B
I disliked any of the above, and the course was easy: C
Any other conditions: C- to B, but mostly in the C’s!
Translation… If I was engaged/motivated, I met and even exceeded expectations; If I wasn’t engaged, I did what I needed to do in order to pass.
In my classes with lower marks, I’m fairly certain that I would have looked like someone not really capable of doing more. Or else I may have been a classic examples of a student who gets those wonderful report card comments, ‘Not meeting his potential’, or ‘Capable of better marks if effort improves’.
I may not be brilliant, but I can’t think of a single course I took in university that I wasn’t capable of getting an ‘A’ in. So why didn’t my report cards show a plethora of A’s? Here is the crux: The content or the learning experiences weren’t interesting enough for me!
In fact, I often broke the criteria for projects and assignments. I would do what I wanted and ‘take the hit’ on my marks. (I have a perfect example of this that I’ll share at another time.) Or, I simply felt bored and didn’t bother putting an effort in. I’m not proud of this, but it is not an exaggeration to say that I probably handed in more than a third of my assignments late, simply because I didn’t want to do them in the first place.
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If we engage our students in interactive, social, dynamic learning opportunities that are meaningful to them, then what are they capable of?
How is a post inspired? Where do the seeds of thought that blossom into these very words come from?
The seeds
• I have a student in my class that is currently on a very unhealthy diet. I know that I cannot convince her to get off of it without replacing it in some way. I hunt down my copy of Anthony Robbin’s ‘Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement‘ because I remember that it has a very well executed, healthy eating strategy. I find the book and it has a few paper bookmarks in it from a couple decades ago. From the page with the first bookmark:
… you will enrich your world and enrich your work if you bring to it the same curiosity and vitality you bring to your play.
• I read Claudia Ceraso’s insightful post, Blogging So Far , (I like her blogger’s view of Google). I realize that like Claudia, I too have had my blog for 1 year. I follow the links and come across a few “5 reasons I blog” posts… not my kind of post to write, but interesting to read. [From Claudia's post]
A blog is a learning engine A node in your PLE (personal learning environment ). A virtual zone of proximal development . Learning happens when you connect to other people (other, meaning diverse , not just a group of different people). Reading alone with my books is half way to learning. I need to ask. If the author cannot be consulted anymore, I’d much rather find what their readers are writing in blogs. Always connecting, constructing, learning.
In my attempt to (im)migrate into a web2.0 user/participant it has been the informal learning that has been most beneficial/rewarding. For example, your post: Competing Paradigms and Educational Reform struck a chord with me almost a year ago, and prompted me to quote you on my fledgeling blog. It was one of a number of influences that has made me questions my practice and the practice of schools.
I am now trying to bring Science Alive for my students in a way I never dreamed I could before… But this did not come from any formal community. It came from a loosely bound community of learners, unequally nurturing and feeding off of each other. It came from a digital web-path of hyperlinks which has helped construct meaning and relationships not easily discovered in a linear learning environment.
I think it is the informal learning experiences: the resourceful, interest-driven meandering between, among and within more formal communities/conferences/platforms and collaboration opportunities that has been most meaningful to me.
In essence I have become an empowered learner!
… This comment isn’t just another seed, it is the roots. It is what this post is about. It is why I blog.
The gardening
I start to make the connections between these seedling ideas.
• ‘Vitality‘. My blog is not work, it is play. Play from which I have the benefit of enhancing what I do in my classroom, in my daily job… which in turn provides even more vitality.
• ‘Always connecting, constructing, learning‘. I haven’t been able to finish my book for our book club because I read for 5 minutes and my eyes/my brain are craving a hyperlink… the lateral shifts in thinking that help mesynthesize and add meaning to what I read. I want to interact with my reading, have it engage me. (See the ‘Read a reading’ section of Claudia’s post.)
• ‘An empowered learner‘. I choose. I link. I follow links. I follow my own agenda. I change my agenda because something interests me now. I change my mind. ‘I’ control my learning… and I have never in my life enjoyed learning as much as I have since I started truly ‘blogging’ a few months ago.
The bloom
So how is a post inspired? I find seeds of inspiration, let them germinate in my mind, and a new post has blossomed.
“Because we all need to take a stand…”
Today is Stop Cyberbullying Day – Friday March 30th, 2007
This kind of learning is so rich, and it is so diametrically opposed to traditional school learning.
Hyperlinks bring learning alive for me… they give me choice. How do we give students choice about their learning in school? How do we empower them as learners?
DavidArrived here to your post through the blog reactions widget. From now on, I will call it seed tracker.
I confess I had many doubts before publishing my ‘Blogging so Far’ post. It was a kind of stream of consciousness that made me wonder how much sense would readers make of it. I was talking to myself.
This empowered learning as you say can point to so many directions, I think it is good to post about it and let others get into conversations with our thoughts.
Emma, Thank you for the link, I really do appreciate it! Claudia,
How serendipitous… When I first read your post, (one of my ‘seeds’), I followed some links within your links and came across Christine Hunewell’s a blogger as writer. When composing my post, I spent about half an hour looking for it, it really was another seed to my post!
… and here we are full circle with you, once again, providing me the link- thankfully the path is more direct this time.
With respect to your ‘stream of consciousness’ writing… I believe that state is an ideal writing state, and that some of my best writing has come when I have written to/for myself.
Thank you for your comment, and your wonderfully inspiring post!
David Truss on Saturday, 31 March 2007, 04:36 CEST
It was refreshing to hear Maureen Dockendorf, our staff development co-ordinator, (Director of Instruction), speak at our Building Leadership Capacity (BLC*) series introduction.
She encouraged us to become ‘intellectual companions’ that enter into ‘learning conversations’. The part I liked most about her talk was the direction of the conversation. She spoke of:
Not the Knowing, but the Process of Inquiry.
Not covering the curriculum, but ‘uncovering’ the curriculum.
A focus in innovation and creativity… how do we model this… every day?
Maureen also spoke of the 5 needs that we (students/teachers/learners) have:
The need to feel confident,
The need to feel like we belong,
The need to be potent- feel you have made a difference,
The need to feel useful, and
The need to have a sense of optimism.
(She identified her source for this, but I didn’t write it down.) ["The reference to the needs of the 21st learner were from the former president of ASCD , Martha Bruckner." -Thanks for passing on this information in your comment Maureen.]
I think that when using technology in the classroom, it would be prudent to keep these needs in mind!
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Learning Conversations Part II
I started by saying Maureen’s presentation was refreshing. I think I felt that way because when I look back at my blog, I can see parallels to what she spoke about. I think that it is significant that the Director of Instruction in our district is prioritizing these ideas when talking to teachers interested in leadership… especially as more and more pressure is being placed on districts to perform well on standardized tests. So here is my take on what Maureen said relative to what I have written about, (here in this blog so far). Also note my Meta-Analysis of these two parts below.
Not the Knowing, but the Process of Inquiry:
Articulate your Thinking
The BIG IDEA:
One overall school goal of”Articulate Thinking”.
Building the skills necessary to develop articulate students who can express their thoughts in meaningful, articulate ways.
The Philosophical Bent:
I don’t really care if my daughters, upon graduation, can identify the subordinate clause in a sentence or if they can tell me how to find the volume of a cone… I do care that they can express themselves in thoughtful, meaningful ways and demonstrate social responsibility in their decision making.
Sharing and Engaging: Web 2-point-0h-Yeah!
Vanja both wanted, and demanded a learning conversation. For me it was wonderful to see a student expecting more from her peers, or should I say, from her community of learners.
Reflections:
From Cynthia, “I learned more by sharing than by searching.”
From Mona, “You actually get to learn with each other and help others learn.”
From Lily, “It was fun doing this project and I enjoyed this kind of learning experience when you get to find your own knowledge rather than laying it all out for you. I feel that I have achieved something really good each time I’ve found some interesting facts on the blog and the dialogues, which made me put more time into these things. I realized that this could be another way of learning new things and also communicating with each other rather than finding information by yourself.
“How do you know when your students are learning?… When they are asking the right questions.
“the use of blogs to learn not just to teach”
I need to ask myself:
‘Am I adding technology to my teaching or providing students with new learning and new ways to learn?’
‘Am I creating an environment where students will express, synthesize, and reflect on their (and each other’s) learning, or am I creating a new way to report out?’ (A glorified poster board).
‘Am I encouraging students to be lifelong learners?’
A side note: The curriculum does not come up in my line of questioning… it seems almost insignificant in this meta conversation. Does it matter what the content is, or isn’t the process far more important?
I think that if we want students to be lifelong learners, and we want them to take ownership of their own learning to any extent, then subject discipline must be, at the very least, ‘loosened’ up. [Which leads us to...]
Not covering the curriculum, but ‘uncovering’ the curriculum:
David Warlick’s K12 Online Conference Keynote (Derailing Education) “This is why the foundation of education systems today should not be the rails, but it should be the side trips. It should not be the central standard curriculum, but it should be those directions that students, that learners, both teachers and students, can navigate to on their own.” (David Warlick)
…the teacher as the compass. We point in a direction, (not necessarily the direction that the student is going), and we are a reference point or guide to the learning. As students sail (rather than ride the rails) they must choose their destination, (what they want to learn), and tack and adjust their path as they go… using the teacher as a compass that keeps them on their ‘learning’ course.
Christopher D. Sessums :: Competing Paradigms and Educational Reform
(Linked above to his post, not my short exerpt)
“The crucial elements that will sustain school improvement is not high-stakes testing, standards, or reactionary accountability programs – “it is simple human trust… that rests on four supports: respect, competency, integrity, and personal regard for others” (George 2006). “ In terms of education, the alternate paradigm acknowledges the following broad perspective:
Curriculum is best derived from the needs and interests of the learners.
Developmental appropriateness should supersede national assessment.
“The developmental needs for learners are widespread and cannot be easily or meaningfully reduced to a pencil-based exam.”
Articulate your Thinking (again, but this time from Gary Kern)
I would differentiate all learning, but I would try to cluster learning objectives so that teachers can continue to play a crucial role in learning and still be the main facilitator for learning. The computer, in its ideal form, is the tool that allows us to individualize student work. It will allow us to communicate in real time, learn in real time, and assess in real time. It will be the lever to better learning. Teachers, however, will need to be better than ever before. They will be the fuel for the flame.
…Teams of teachers would still work together to deliver the curriculum, but the interaction and model would be much different than today. Some genius will lay out the curriculum into standards and objectives that are clear and easy to follow. Teachers will bring the objectives to life, and technology will allow students to demonstrate their learning in ways unimaginable only a few short years ago. Problem based learning and rich task learning will be for the masses.
A focus in innovation and creativity… how do we model this… every day?
Many of the Square/Round Peg Students (that don’t fit into our other-shaped schools) are the future thinkers/dreamers/innovators that are going to meaningfully change our world. We need to recognize their future value… We have an obligation to nurture them, and to develop their enthusiasm for learning. It isn’t just about not stifling creativity or not making schools so alien… it is about creating an environment where every child can thrive… Not making the misfits fit, but rather helping them create a space that fits them. Application of Constructivist Principles to the Practice of Instructional Technology
Think in terms of designing learning environments rather than selecting instructional strategies. Metaphors are important. Does the designer “select” a strategy or “design” a learning experience? Grabinger, Dunlap, and Heath (1993) provide design guidelines for what they call realistic environments for active learning (REAL); these guidelines reflect a constructivist orientation:
Extend students’ responsibility for their own learning.
Make learning meaningful.
Promote active knowledge construction.
Think of instruction as providing tools that teachers and students can use for learning; make these tools user-friendly. This frame of mind is virtually the opposite of “teacher-proofing” instructional materials to assure uniform adherence to designers’ use expectations. Instead, teachers and students are encouraged to make creative and intelligent use of instructional tools and resources. (Bonnie Skaalid)
“High expectations are important and needed, but not within a rigorous environment that does not encourage differentiation and flexibility within classrooms. Learning is inherently a dynamical process, not isolated events that can be entirely centrally planned, and our educational language as well as policies should recognize this. We need to embrace differentiation, flexibility and high expectations for all students.” (Wesley Fryer)
But there is a dichotomy here: Our ‘educational language’ around standardization and accountability juxtaposed with differentiation and flexibility… we seem to have two mutually exclusive camps, yet there seems to be a move to embrace both. To embrace both is to accomplish neither.
We need to be adept at creating flexible, differentiated learning environments.
We need to be computer literate, and also be able to teach a new kind of literacy. (Warlick)
We need to teach students to synthesize information and add new meaning.
We must change what we do. (And we need visionary leaders to lead the way!) “We need visionary educational leadership that understands and effectively communicates the importance of emphasizing student CREATIVITY and the creation of original (and remixed) knowledge products.”(Wesley Fryer)
A Story About A Tree
…This started out as a story about a tree, and it will end with the planting of some seeds…
How will we use the community building aspects of the internet to foster learning in schools?
How do we make schools into ‘modern day’ learning communities?
How do we get students to engage rather than escape?
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Meta-Analysis: Hyperlinks fuel the fire
At first, this post was going to be a short reporting-out of my BLC meeting, or more specifically Maureen’s talk. Then I reflected on her words and created Part II, which was going to become this post… but the process of creating Part II ‘planted the seed’ for this post to evolve as it has.
In creating Part II, I tried to put enough information into each section that it really wasn’t necessary to follow a link unless the reader had a personal interest in the specific topic. The ‘effort’ to create this section, in itself, was a meaningful learning experience. Searching for relevant connections and following the hyper-linked-thoughts transformed the post from a simple learning conversation to multiple learning conversations… it allowed me to synthesize ideas and add meaning to the words that I originally heard at the meeting. It took hours to do this, but it was worth it – I became a participant in the learning process – I created internal learning conversations and expressed them externally here.
How does the presence of hyperlinks change the experience of this post for the reader? I can answer that for myself having been consumed by my own reading of edublogs over the past few months. The challenge I now face is being selective on which hyperlinks, which side trips, I choose to go down… this is proving to be a skill that I am learning/honing… but the decision-making process has more to do with personal interests than a logical/deductive process. In keeping with the theme of this post, the act of effectively following hyperlinks is in and of itself a process of inquiry, it requires taking tangents from the curriculum and seeking to ‘uncover’ what is interesting, and it requires the participant to creatively select (personal) relevance. Teaching this skill will be a challenge… one that cannot be measured by standardized tests, but will be a necessary skill for the 21st Century.
Feb. 5th… I have to add hyperlinks to this section! Jesse Lubinsky from Irvington School District in NY sent a video link to Jennifer Cronk. Her post was picked up by Will Richardson who is in my Netvibes feedreader. The video is from, “Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University“. It is a fantastic video that exemplifies how web2.0 is changing how we connect, what we do… and who we are. I have tried to ‘say’ things on this video… it doesn’t just speak what I have tried to say, (a number of times on this blog), it breathes it!
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*What is the BLC series?
The Building Leadership Capacity series is open to teachers interested in both formal and informal leadership. The four sessions will focus on inquiring and exploring the building of personal leadership capacity through a variety of experiences. The series puts a high priority on opportunities for participants to talk about leadership, bringing the unique perspective of a diverse group of educational professionals together in one room (using the School District Learning Team model**).
**What is a Learning Team
Learning teams are small groups of educators that meet to engage in a professional growth experience focused on improving instructional practice and student learning. Learning teams are facilitated by a variety of educators who have expertise in the topical/curricular area, and in facilitation. Two to three hour meetings occur six times in the year and take the following format: individual write, sharing, discussion, work-time, reporting back and a commitment for the next meeting.
Learning teams offer an opportunity for teachers to meet in a meaningful learning environment. My last post on Articulate Your Thinking came out of a conversation in a learning team. They are an innovative approach to Professional Development in that they provide teachers with an opportunity to engage in ‘learning conversations’ that we want to have, but never seem to be able to find the time to have!
Originally posted: February 4th, 2007
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
I won’t add anything here… at this time. I’ve already done a meta-analysis and the idea behind this post will be developed further for one of my presentations at Alan November’s BLC08.
Maureen’s Comment on my original post:
I have greatly appreciated your meta analysis and the potential for deep and thoughtful conversation based on your writing. The reference to the needs of the 21st learner were from the former president of ASCD, Martha Bruckner. I continue to ask myself how to replicated the level of engagement of the skateboarders into who we are as teachers, administrators in schools?
{I was just chatting on-line with a past student, telling her that I was having difficulty writing this post. As it turns out, she wrote a similar post just hours ago. Rather than continuing my tedious process of writing, deleting and re-writing a mediocre introduction, I thought I would start, and finish, with her eloquent words… and I shall say very little.}
“The creative work that came out of the arts in [past centuries] had to be excellent, because each individual’s standard of living depended on it. Nowadays, I would argue, creative work need not be excellent–just acceptable.”
Are we willing to ‘settle’ for less? What about The “Dumbness” of Crowds? I think it is wonderful that anyone can have an audience (see Numa Numa), and share their creativity, but how much must an uninterested audience wade through to find something meaningful?
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“…there’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam in creative work floating around today–or should I say, dotsam and netsam, a term we’ll probably be hearing a lot more of in the near future.”
I find that this post brings out a melancholy feeling in me. I’m not sure if it is because it doesn’t necessarily portray the message I wanted it to, or if it is because it is about mediocrity and our willingness to accept it.
That said, I attempted a couple things here worth mentioning. First of all, for the first time in this blog, I tried to use imagery to make a point. Secondly, I believe that I was frustrated since i was trying to understandThe Long Tail but lacked both the language and comprehension that such a thing existed. How does a guy holding a video camera and talking about mundane things get over a million views of his videos? If you want an audience, you can find one… in fact, they will find you.
But the real challenge is battling mediocrity! When Gary Kern was my Vice Principal, he would often say, “Good is the Enemy of Great”. If something is good (enough) then there is no need to make it better. It seems today that even the standard of ‘good’ is being lowered to acceptable. Now let me pause here and say that this is not about how ‘kids today’ are lazier or less caring or…
What this is about is how we as a society are being trained to ‘settle’. Of course I’m talking about the proverbial ‘we’ here:
• We don’t fix our lifestyle, we take antacid pills.
• We complain about how much longer commercial breaks are, but watch them anyway.
• We watch predictable tv and horrible Youtube videos.
• We watch the news and complain about how bad things have gotten.
• We create multiple choice tests because they are easy to mark.
• We don’t get rid of graffiti.
• We don’t vote.
• We buy cheap things, and we don’t care when they break.
Accepting mediocrity is a national pastime. If ‘Good’ is the enemy of ‘Great’, then ‘Mediocrity’ is the enemy of _____________.
“In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what’s coming at them and distinguish between what’s reliable and what isn’t. “It’s important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it,” says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education.”
Wesley says, “It’s not just about SEARCHING, it’s about FINDING and VALIDATING.”
In a comment I posted on Wesley’s blog, I pay this compliment, “A great summary that SYNTHESIZES and ADDS MEANING.” Then I suggest, “I would add those two to your sentence: “It’s not just about SEARCHING, it’s about FINDING and VALIDATING.”
…and that is exactly what Wesley has done with his post, he synthesizes what the article says, but he goes further… he draws from other sources, and new meaning is added. For example, Wesley disagrees (as do I) with the article’s suggestion of greater rigor and standardized testing. He links us to his podcast #79 titled, ‘Reject Rigor: Embrace Differentiation, Flexibility, and High Expectations’.
“High expectations are important and needed, but not within a rigorous environment that does not encourage differentiation and flexibility within classrooms. Learning is inherently a dynamical process, not isolated events that can be entirely centrally planned, and our educational language as well as policies should recognize this. We need to embrace differentiation, flexibility and high expectations for all students.”
That’s a poster quote right there:
But there is a dichotomy here: Our ‘educational language’ around standardization and accountability juxtaposed with differentiation and flexibility… we seem to have two mutually exclusive camps, yet there seems to be a move to embrace both. To embrace both is to accomplish neither.
“Learners are not in school so they can take tests, be tested, and be translated metaphorically into statistics that are aggregated into charts and graphs used by politicians to secure their elective offices. Learners are in school to LEARN, and the confusion which abounds regarding the proper role of assessments today is a key part of educational reforms our nation desperately needs.”
“We do NOT need more testing, more rigorous testing, and/or more end-of-course examinations in our schools. Testing has never “saved” and will never “save us” from the challenges which face us in the educational environment. Only high quality, professional, caring, passionate teachers can provide what our students deserve and in many cases desperately need: A differentiated, challenging environment of customized learning that involves regular dialog and authentic assessment…”
The challenge now is recognizing that this fundamentally changes a teacher’s practice… we are on a new road, but I don’t see a roadmap being developed. I think we lack the perspective to make the map. Current assessment strategies limit our vision. Current subject-disciplines also limit possibilities and compartmentalize assessment using a different paradigm than is needed.
We need to be adept at creating flexible, differentiated learning environments
We need to be computer literate, and also be able to teach a new kind of literacy. (Warlick)
We need to teach students to synthesize information and add new meaning.
We must change what we do. (And we need visionary leaders to lead the way!)
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Having said what we need to do… I am contemplating ‘What we are” (as teachers). I think my next post will be a tribute to teachers, but not the kind you would expect after a post like this…
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I’m back, not even an hour after posting this! Several times I came across the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, first here and here on Wesley’s blog, then back on Netvibes where I picked up Cool Cat Teacher‘s del.icio.us post… which led me to an article by none other than Wesley Fryer once again!
Well, third time’s a charm. It clicked that my use of ‘Add new Meaning’ in this post was an attempt to describe the CREATION of new knowledge as seen on the revised taxonomy above. I am wondering what happened to Synthesis? Is this part of Evaluation?
In a final dedication to Wesley Fryer, I will end with this quote from the TechLearning article:
“We need visionary educational leadership that understands and effectively communicates the importance of emphasizing student CREATIVITY and the creation of original (and remixed) knowledge products.”
Thanks Wesley!
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Sunday March 11th, 2007
This is great: Cognitive Taxonomy Circle
I found this at Jeff Utecht’s U Tech Tips, his source is this American Psychological Association blog post.
Originally posted: December 26th, 2006
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
I’ve added the comments on my original post into the first comment below.
This introduction to the *new* Blooms Taxonomy was sort of a re-awakening for me. A reminder of what really matters in teaching and learning. It was around this time that I started to take a much more constructivist approach to teaching. I was already developing this in Math, but wasn’t really aware that I was doing so. If you scroll down on the first page of my SciencAlive wiki, you can see that I based the project on students’ ability to demonstrate higher order thinking.
I have very recently been thinking that the *old* Blooms Taxonomy is better, with ‘Create’ being the ‘task’ or ‘demonstration’ of learning, but keeping Synthesis and Evaluation as the ‘skills’.
“For the past five years, the national conversation on education has focused on reading scores, math tests and closing the “achievement gap” between social classes. This is not a story about that conversation. This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get “left behind” but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can’t think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.”
“I wonder how many natural mathematicians, engineers, artists, composers, story tellers and innovators we are wasting, when we measure our schools almost exclusively on their ability to produce good test takers.
How many natural born leaders are we squandering as we teach them to listen, watch, follow direction, regurgitate facts, to sit down and shut up. How many leaders are we losing when we teach them to be taught — in stead of teaching them to teach.
Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.
“Truthfully what happens is that, as children grow up, we start to educate them progressively from the waste up. And then we focus on their heads, and slightly to one side…”
“My contention is that all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.”
Here it is from a student who will be a lifelong learner, dare I say… despite her schooling. She is the one that sent me the time article above, which got me thinking about compiling this post.
“To the adult readers out there: this is how public education is contributing to your child’s success. We list the qualities we have in one column, the qualities we don’t in another, and write about how the qualities we have will make us nice, successful white collar workers someday, coupled with a post-secondary education and a Graduation Portfolio with bureacratically-documented evidence (signed in triplicate) of us kissing the toes of their shiny black shoes.
Of course, like every student who hopes of one day becoming a successful, white collar worker, the answer I intend to put down is a lot less sarcastic and a lot more Ministry-friendly. There is satisfaction in lashing out at public education on a blog, and there is self-preservation in doing exactly what they tell you on the work you hand in. I have a hunch the Ministry won’t like it, but I still wonder, as I hope others will: “Why?”
“…technology adoption… It’s typically a four-step process:
Dabbling.
Doing old things in old ways.
Doing old things in new ways.
Doing new things in new ways.
…Some people will no doubt worry that, with all this experimentation, our children’s education will be hurt. “When will we have time for the curriculum,” they will ask, “and for all the standardized testing being mandated?” If we really offered our children some great future-oriented content (such as, for example, that they could learn about nanotechnology, bioethics, genetic medicine, and neuroscience in neat interactive ways from real experts), and they could develop their skills in programming, knowledge filtering, using their connectivity, and maximizing their hardware, and that they could do so with cutting-edge, powerful, miniaturized, customizable, and one-to-one technology, I bet they would complete the “standard” curriculum in half the time it now takes, with high test scores all around. To get everyone to the good stuff, the faster kids would work with and pull up the ones who were behind.
In other words, if we truly offer our kids an Edutopia worth having, I believe our students will work as hard as they can to get there.
So, let’s not just adopt technology into our schools. Let’s adapt it, push it, pull it, iterate with it, experiment with it, test it, and redo it, until we reach the point where we and our kids truly feel we’ve done our very best. Then, let’s push it and pull it some more. And let’s do it quickly, so the twenty-second century doesn’t catch us by surprise with too much of our work undone.
A big effort? Absolutely. But our kids deserve no less.”
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Animal School- by R.Z. Greenwald… Curriculum: Running, Flying, Climbing, and Swimming
(Click this button in the link provided to view this movie/slideshow)
Schools do not make accommodations for individual talents and learning styles. A slide show of a story I read a long time ago… still priceless!
“It is perhaps ironic that within our culture we insist that we place such value on creativity and then blatantly try to steal it away from children in the contexts of their educational experiences and their upbringing. As a culture we need to finally decide what we really want for our children and then carefully design and monitor experiences which provide those things we value.”
This has links to 3 versions of The Little Boy by Helen Buckley.
Where do we go from here? We can keep looking at Kathy Sierra for the answer!
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I started this blog with a post titled, The purpose of a system is what it does, and I started this post with a ‘Time’ (or perhaps ‘Timeless’) article that states in the second paragraph,
“American schools aren’t exactly frozen in time, but considering the pace of change in other areas of life, our public schools tend to feel like throwbacks. Kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed. A yawning chasm (with an emphasis on yawning) separates the world inside the schoolhouse from the world outside.”
Incremental changes will not take us where we need to be. Standardized testing, outdated curriculum and unwired classrooms won’t get us there. Teachers using a white Smart Board to simply replace the green chalk board, which replaced the blackboard, won’t get us there.
What profound change is needed? I don’t think one teacher at a time can do it. What is going to get us over the Big Frickin’ Wall?
Note my “Articulate Thinkers” post, Jan. 29/07, based on an e-mail ‘conversation’ I had almost three years ago…
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Dec. 18. It has been a while since I looked at Christopher D. Sessums’ Weblog. He just added me to his friends list here on eduspaces and I visited his blog again. I found his post with this apple commercial… which pays tribute to the misfits/the crazies/ the ‘Round Pegs in the Square Holes’.
It reminded me of the main reason I wrote this post, which I alluded to, but didn’t really mention. Many of the Square/Round Peg Students (that don’t fit into our other-shaped schools) are the future thinkers/dreamers/innovators that are going to meaningfully change our world. We need to recognize their future value… We have an obligation to nurture them, and to develop their enthusiasm for learning. It isn’t just about not stifling creativity or not making schools so alien… it is about creating an environment where every child can thrive… Not making the misfits fit, but rather helping them create a space that fits them. [I think that the technology is now available to make this easier!]
And I’m demoralized, as I’m now having to tell kids, “A paragraph is an idea – unless your teacher tells you it’s five to seven sentences, and then that’s what it is.”
Jan. 16th. I found this in the inaugural post of madamespider, yet another example of a student’s frustration…
“Let me just say this: I hate school with a passion. You’ll never find someone who loves education more than I do, don’t get me wrong, but as far as I’m concerned, school is not education. I believe one should learn because they want to and understand the value of knowledge, not have it shoved down their throats by the school board or government or whoever.”
…and here again, in reaction to this post, is madamespider,
“Looking back on the talks and ’specialists’ they tried to send me to within the school, I now realize that they were treating me as if I had a behavior problem or learning disability. Like I needed their support to do better. That’s not what I needed. I needed something to make it matter to me. That’s what I still need.”
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Feb. 3rd, 07 Here is a quote from Bruce Springsteen,
“I wasn’t quite suited for the educational system. One problem with the way the educational system is set up is that it only recognizes a certain type of intelligence, and it’s incredibly restrictive — very, very restrictive. There’s so many types of intelligence, and people who would be at their best outside of that structure [get lost]. Most of the schools, they’re aiming to build you up and get you into the machine.”
I found this on ‘The Genius in All of Us‘ blog by David Shenk… this is an interesting blog to explore further!
Originally posted: December 10th, 2006
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
Here are a couple of the comments from the original post:
I really appreciate the feedback, and I’ve responded to all this on my blog. It’s rather lengthy, but it’s basically my perspective on the whole matter of my schooling. Hopefully it will yield something worth thinking about, though it’s rather disorganized. I’ll certainly revisit the subject, I’ve got a lot to say =)
Great work Dave. It’s going to take me a week to get through all these links! Maybe you could wiki this for those of us who only have snippets of time to look at things. Awesome dude (quote from a 15 year old as we watched a student video creation. Thought that line was dead!)
This post was very instrumental to my thinking and it was inspired by a former student, Kris. Later, I helped inspire one of her posts and it got a little bit of attention: How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci was a finalist in the 2007 Edublog Awards in the Most Influential category. Now I am helping her by hosting her blog, and she is helping me with some tech support… the teacher/student lines are blurred. It is no longer about established roles, but rather it is about learners helping each other… hubs in a learning network.
Many times I thought I would create a sequel to this post, or take Kelly’s advice and start a wiki. However now it seems so obviously pessimistic to do so. This post says it all… I don’t need to wallow in yet more examples of how schools don’t fit students. As I said above, “it is about creating an environment where every child can thrive.” For that to happen we need differentiated instruction, we need a flexible curriculum, and we need teachers that are the same life-long learners we hope our students become.
This one is on Servant Leadership – providing students with capacities and competencies…
“Through their programs schools can provide the opportunity for the development of capacities and competencies, that enable young people to get started on the path of acting with a sense of civic responsibility. Through programs of community and “service” learning, student leadership programs, peer mediation and coaching, mentoring programs, and student decision-making groups, schools can provide the opportunity to students to develop a sense of commitment to others and a sense of service to further the interests of all groups in society.”
Page 431 Quote from International Handbook on Lifelong Learning, Chapman & D. Aspin , Edited by David N Aspin, Judith Chapman, Michael Hatton, Yukiko Sawano, (2001) Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic
Peter Senge writes on Creative Tension and moving from Reality to Vision.
Leadership in a learning organization starts with the principle of creative tension. Creative tension comes from seeing clearly where we want to be, our “vision,” and telling the truth about where we are, our “current reality.” The gap between the two generates a natural tension. Creative tension can be resolved in two basic ways: by raising current reality toward the vision, or by lowering the vision toward current reality. Individuals, groups, and organizations who learn how to work with creative tension learn how to use the energy it generates to move reality more reliably toward their visions.
Peter M. Senge, The Leader’s New Work: Building Learning Organizations, Sloan Review, Fall 1990. p. 9.
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Michael Fullan on Knowledge Sharing – we have a ways to go in Education.
It is ironic that schools systems are late to the game of knowledge building both for their students and for their teachers. Most schools are not good at knowledge sharing within their own walls…”
M. Fullan (2001), Leading in a Culture of Change.San Francisco John Wiley & Sons. (p. 104).
Originally posted: May 7th, 2006
Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting:
Until my blog address changed from elgg to eduspaces, this was the most Google-searched link on my blog. The idea of Servant Leadership is an incredible way to get students involved in their school, in their community, and with the greater world at large. The selfless nature of this kind of leadership is something we should all aspire to pass on to our students. Recently teachers in our district have started using Kiva, and I have worked with Free the Children. It is wonderful when we can get students to show compassion on a global scale!
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The idea of creative tension is interesting when looking at technology integration. I think there are shifts in the tide between the current reality of what can be done using the resources and technology available, and the vision of where things need to go. Waves of elation and frustration flow through the blogosphere.
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Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration! Whether it is within the walls of our schools or not is unimportant. What is important is that we don’t waste valuable time and energy reinventing things that are easily shared. Teachers are not islands! Why is it that I have a more intimate understanding of what some teachers around the world do in their classes, (thanks to their blogs), than I know about the teaching practice of someone I taught across the hall from for 6 years? Trustees, Superintendents, Administrators, Teachers… make more time available for collaboration
Two Wolves Which wolf will you feed? A Remembrance Day Post
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Warning! We filter websites at school. Filters filter learning!
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My blog is my PhD I have given myself a Blogtorate of Philosophy.
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Bubble Wrap What we are doing is creating a facade of security, nothing more than an illusion of bubble wrap.
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Who are the People in Your Neighbourhood? My (digital) neighbourhood spans the globe.
The parent observantly noted that although her son could be physically in a room, he could often ‘disconnect’ and be elsewhere in his mind. For him to be more successful, he would need to engage more in what was going on. I told him, with all honesty, that I too had that problem to the point that my parents worried that I might have been on drugs (I wasn’t). It took until my Grade 13 year (Ontario, Canada) to recognize that I needed to be a participant in the classroom in order to ‘stay connected’.
‘. ‘Magic mop’ image by Chris Hogg on Flickr. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson quote, ‘Metaphors We Live By
‘, University of Chicago Press, 1980, pg. 156. Quote by Dan Pink:’A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
‘, Penguin Group, 2006, pg. 140. ‘Life & Music’ video written by Alan Watt
The concept is to let students choose their own topic to explore, and then demonstrate learning on all the levels of 
‘ because I remember that it has a very well executed, healthy eating strategy. I find the book and it has a few paper bookmarks in it from a couple decades ago. From the page with the first bookmark: 
In my attempt to (im)migrate into a web2.0 user/participant it has been the informal learning that has been most beneficial/rewarding. 
• ‘Vitality‘. My blog is not work, it is play. Play from which I have the benefit of enhancing what I do in my classroom, in my daily job… which in turn provides even more vitality. 
Claudia,
by 
, Sloan Review, Fall 1990. p. 9.
.San Francisco John Wiley & Sons. (p. 104).
Background
