You CAN Always Get What You Want

You CAN Always Get What You Want

          The Rolling Stones famously sing about not getting what you want but getting what you need. In today’s instant information access world the ‘Wizards’ behind the curtains are making sure you get what you want, cherry red sodas and all. Fitting in with what ‘The Information Diet’ and ‘The App Generation’ so thoroughly cover, I read this article from the BBC (I know you’re thinking “The BBC again?”… I swear I don’t pause for afternoon tea, and when nature calls I’ve never proclaimed that I was heading to the loo, I digress). Even though it’s intended for a business audience, I think; and in light of recent events that our classmate Zack narrowly missed, it is spot on in its assessment of the dangers of living in a digital bubble curated to only offer options that you’re more than likely to click on. Give it a read and then Google up an opinion totally opposite of your own, or at least try a different pharmacy than the one in Chelsea.

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161212-algorithms-are-making-us-small-minded

The App Generation

The App Generation

***WARNING: This week’s post contains some adult themes and topics***

            The App Generation is a very insightful look at how today’s youth are immersed in a digital world where the gateways for connection to information and other people have never been more wide-open and what that means for a generation that’s growing up in an app connected world. Their lives, relationships, and how they think differ greatly in application than those of us who grew up in the pre-digital era.

            After reading ‘The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World’ I came across this article from the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161201-the-sex-workers-selling-access-to-their-real-lives. The article details how webcam models are selling access to their private lives by selling access to their Snapchat accounts, as well as KIK and other social media websites. They’re not just selling their nakedness, but also a peek into their daily routines and real lives, albeit the best curated content, not unlike the ‘best-selves’ we portray on Facebook and other social media. It also states “…there is no longer anything unusual about conducting intimate relationships online. Daniel Miller at University College London, who studies the impact of webcams on human interactions, takes it as given that video-based interactions carried out over the internet can be as intimate as face-to-face human contact – and perhaps more so. “It’s entirely possible that Snapchat allows a form of intimacy that other methods don’t allow,” he says.”

            I thought article fit well with the chapter ‘Apps and Intimate Relationships’ especially this book quote about how apps are shortcuts “These shortcuts make interacting with others much quicker, easier, and less risky…such conveniences can certainly enable meaningful relations and, at their best, strengthen and deepen personal bonds.” (Emphasis added). The chapter also covers the ‘hook-up’ culture of today’s youth who would rather go through a series of causal sexual relationships than to open themselves up to risk an intimate committed relationship. Might these webcam models who are selling access to their ‘personal’ lives be filling an intimacy void to those who seek out these sexually gratifying online interactions? One thing is for sure, our online connected world is changing how we interact with others.

            The next article I came across on the same BBC site was: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161129-the-new-words-that-reveal-how-tech-has-changed-us. I think this article goes along with the chapter ‘Personal Identity in the Age of the App’ as it covers how we are now coming up with words to describe our addictions to our smartphones. Even in the lighthearted defining of our smartphone usage we can identify with the “bowed head tribe”. This digital age can blur the lines between our online and offline identities or it can sharply contrast our online selves with our real selves and our youth are taking comfort in the safety of an externalized, packaged identity. Our youth, or digital natives, are immersed in all forms of digital connection and of ways of putting themselves ‘out there.’ They know not of a time when face to face interactions were the dominate way of how we navigated our world.

            In the chapter Acts (and Apps) of Imagination the authors expand upon how our youth find creative ways to express themselves in the confines of our technologies, much like the early users of the telegraph soon found many more uses for the telegraph than the creators intended, our youth are always pushing the creative boundaries of what an app was originally created for. Imaginations, they contend, are more likely to be facilitated with more efficient ways to communicate them, and as we’ve come to know our current culture is as connected of a world as there has been.

            As I read about this current app generation and think of how my students navigate their own identities, intimacies, and imaginations I must take careful consideration of whether they are an app-dependent or and app-enabled population. I must craft my teaching designs to help them be app-enabled where they are using the available technologies to broaden their possibilities as it relates to helping them finding their place in the world. I must mindfully craft an environment in my classroom that considers the differences of the app generation from the pre-digital ones and enable my students to express themselves in ways that are uniquely theirs.

P.S. I do not endorse those who take part in the world’s oldest occupation. I merely found the article relevant to the book in the fact that our growing digital world is changing the way some may define intimacy.

Net Smart - a review by Jim

Net Smart: How to thrive online by Howard Rheingold.

       Net Smart by Howard Rheingold is a great follow up book to The Information Diet that we read early this semester. While The Information Diet book was a flashing road-sign making us aware of our information consumption and how to be aware of what we are consuming, Net Smart is the road-map to help us navigate the social media landscape with thought, thoughtfulness of others, and how to do it mindfully. Social media is here to stay and if we want to thrive in a world that combines our physical actions with our online lives then we need to know how to put into practice living mindfully in cyberspace.

Rheingold cover five digital literacies we should master. They are: attention, crap detection, participation power, collaboration, and networks. The first chapter covers the why and how to control your attention, your mind’s most powerful instrument, online. Are we captains or captives of our attention muscles? Attention, like a muscle can be strengthened and Rheingold gives us ways to do that including meditation. Who knew that following your breathing could help in our online lives. The second chapter covers crap-detection, how to find what you need to know and how to decide if it’s true. Parsing the validity of online information in today’s volatile online culture is of extreme importance, especially with our youth. I came across this article on NPR.org this week that points out our need to teach our youth this important skill: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818/study-finds-students-have-dismaying-inability-to-tell-fake-news-from-real

       The third chapter covers how we should be participating in the online universe. How this medium allows the free-flow of information, knowledge and ideas and how it can increase our overall collaborative intelligence.

        The forth chapter expands on our collaborative intelligence and how we can tap into it’s power by using crowd-sourcing or online forums to solve problems that we could not come up with the answers on our own.

       The fifth chapter is a natural extension of all of that collaborative work, networks, the power of human and technological networks. We as humans are inherently social creatures and online networks are a mirror of our need to connect and bridge the gaps between ourselves and how that feeling of interconnected-ness enhances our ability to thrive, in the physical world as well as online. 

       The last chapter cohesively wraps up the previous chapters and extolls us to use the web mindfully by giving us a checklist, or guideposts to helps us find our way. 

       In thinking of what I’ve learned from Net Smart and how it might impact my practice of teaching, I am eager to teach my students how to flex their crap-detection muscles or, after reading that article, how to get them in shape to begin with. I think these are the hidden skills that we take for granted, as we’ve had years of experience in detecting truth from falsehoods, fiction, embellished fish-tales, and even agenda driven information. This book is one I will read again and keep with me to reference from time to time. It’s such a goldmine of a road-map.

Copyright Clarity

How Fair Use Supports Digital Learning

                In Renee Hobbs’ book Copyright Clarity: How Fair Use Supports Digital Learning we learn that there is a lot of misinformation in schools when it comes to copyright law. Hobbs describes three types of understanding of copyright laws by educators;

See No Evil - teachers who believe they can use any material for any purpose, ignorance (of copyright law) is bliss.

Close the door – when teachers & students are discouraged from sharing their work outside of the school building.

Hyper-comply – when teachers are fearful of copyright law and far more restrictive than the actual law states.

This misunderstanding of the copyright law by educators hinders the quality of materials produced by teachers and students.

            Hobbs expands on two points to clarify the confusion over copyright law. First, most people believe that copyright law is there solely to protect the owners’ rights for profit and control. When in reality the U.S. Constitutions says that promoting the spread of knowledge and innovation are the purpose of copyright. This provision of intellectual property rights was included in our Constitution because our Founders believed that a free society would benefit from encouraging the development of new ideas and information. Second is the power of fair use. Fair use of a copyright is not an infringement of copyright, but there are certain factors involved when determining fair use;

•                     The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purpose;

•                     the nature of the copyrighted work;

•                     the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

•                     the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

All this to say that each individual case is going to be different and a blanket statement won’t cover it, fair use requires reasoning and judgement. Hobb says it best here: “It is designed to ensure that the concept of fair use is responsive to the wide variety of contexts in which people use other people’s copyrighted work in the development of their own work.”

            Another helpful point Hobbs makes is understanding transformative use. If a copyrighted material is used in a transformative way, taking a film clip, or music clip, art, whatever and transforming it’s intended use, in our case as educators using it in a lesson and not using it how the creators intended to use it, we are using it in a way that fair use intended, including different concepts of audience, meaning and interpretation. This is not to say we can use a checklist and think we are not infringing upon a copyright, but that with understanding fair use and transfromativeness in our educator roles we can better determine how to use copyrighted materials.

            I think ‘Copyright Clarity’ is a book every educator should read. It does clarify the confusion over copyright law and gives me as an educator a confidence in interpreting copyright law. I think that confidence will impact my practice by allowing me to more confidently use reason and judgement when using copyrighted material to help the society around me (my school) by encouraging the development of new ideas and information. I also see a whole lesson on clarifying copyright law for my students in high-school. Copyright law is a benefit to creators and users and we should be appreciative of a law that actually not only protects our intellectual properties but also encourages sharing of information and ideas to benefit the society as a whole. 

The Information Diet

The Information Diet

            In this digital age of interconnected-ness, of instant likes, news in 140 characters, and specific target-driven advertisements we might all agree that we live in the age of information overload. But would we go as far to agree that we are the cause of our own information obesity? That’s what Clay Johnson lays out for us in his book ‘The Information Diet, A Case for Conscious Consumption’. He compares informational obesity to food obesity – as food has gotten cheaper to produce, we as a society have become less discerning in our food choices and therefore become obese. Likewise information has become cheaper to produce, as he calls it ‘churnalism’ and therefore we have become less discerning in what information we consume. If pointed advertising is giving us the ‘sweets’ we want or desire or agree with, then why take the time in our busy schedules to cross the street to grab a salad? Johnson covers real physical consequences of our lazy information diets, apnea, poor sense of time, attention fatigue, distorted sense of reality, loss of social breadth, and brand loyalty. Much like going on a food diet He suggest we be conscious of our consumption of information. Johnson promotes data literacy, attention fitness, a healthy sense of humor, canceling your cable or satellite tv subscriptions and getting video entertainment from online choices like Youtube, Hulu and Netflix, consuming locally – pay attention to what’s happening in your neighborhood, city and state, lower your exposure to advertisements, diversify where you’re getting your information from – don’t just go to the same places over and over, balance how much of what you consume, and finally fine tune your information consuming adjustment and seek support from friends and family to combat the symptoms of information obesity. Johnson doesn’t blame the advertisers, news corporations or big businesses on our obesity, they’re just giving us what we want, but on how we as a society consume.  

            There was a time when sports were my gluttonous guilty pleasure. I could spend all Saturday consuming nothing but college football, most of the day Sunday on pro-football. Basketball, baseball, hockey, women’s soccer, and heck I found myself watching two guys running around crazy playing ping-pong on TV. Why? Because it was there, it was on television. I don’t consume sports like I used to, growing family responsibilities curtailed my consuming but also a realization that I was just wasting time away and to what gain?

             Reading this book made me give even more thought to my information diet. I agree with the analogy he uses, we should view it as an information diet and be conscious of what we are consuming and the effects it has on our mental and physical health. In thinking about what I’ve learned from this book and how it might impact my teaching practice I think first of all what a great lesson this is for all of us to learn. How can I teach my students to be considerate of the information they consume as well as myself? Also it will give me pause as to what information I am going to feed my students. Is this information absolutely critical to my overall learning goal or is it just filler?

            Much like politicians who go after the sugary drink makers and try to limit their effect on consumers waistlines, there may be those who disagree with Johnson’s book and blame those who create and produce the information we consume for our poor information diets, but I believe He makes some very valid points to help us become better consumers of information and in the process we’ll become healthier for it.

Students as Designers & The Creative Spirit of Design

Students as Designers & the Creative Spirit of Design

            I really didn’t want to be on camera. There’s something about seeing and hearing yourself on film that can leave you with a little butterfly of uneasiness that I’d rather avoid. So I managed to be the cameraman with one small part for our Students as Designers film project. My wife was a little surprised I didn’t want to be in a starring role, “You’ve been on stage before” she advocated. Film is different I thought and retorted. But the more I thought about it, the more I questioned why is it different? I surmised it’s because when you see yourself on film you are your own harshest critic. At least I am - My voice sounds like that? Ugh, I messed up that line. What is going on with my hair? What is that on my face, it looks like I didn’t even shower today! - You get the picture. It’s that inner voice that turns every little bump into a mountain of criticism.

            In the end I thought our video came out great, better than that inner voice was telling me it would be. We had a week to brain-storm and come up with an idea and script to create a promotional video for the program we are in. Once in class we hashed out our story-board, tweaked the script and set off to film. In less than three hours it was done and submitted. We chose to focus on good teaching design versus bad teaching design, and I thought we presented it in a very creative way with a subtle positive result for our ending. The whole project was for a way for us as students to practice our sixth design principle, students as designers.

            For me to have ownership in my own learning had a tremendous impact on me. It showed me that by turning on my creativity, creating whatever we could think of, carried the knowledge of what I’ve learned in the class into a deeper more secure part of my brain. As if that spark of creativity lit-up the dark regions of my brain and the light pushed that knowledge down into the folds and crevasses. I don’t know what turned-on for the others in my group, but for me it was the opportunity to be creative, to help write a script, story-board, and film that got me going. It was something powerful and something that powerful shouldn’t be missing from the schools we send our children to.

            This week we not only learned about ‘Students as Designers’ we were also presented with principles to help us as ‘Teachers as Designers’ not to fall into the trap of limited views and formulaic routines in our design practice. In reading the ‘The Creative Spirit of Design’ article by Jason K. McDonald we get three characteristics that instructional designers (in our case, teachers) can use that will help us to stay out of the unproductive ditch of procedure or formula. The characteristics are imagination, being creation-oriented, and inter-disciplinary action. Using our imagination to imagine that which yet does not exist, and to consider the world as it could be. Being creation-oriented means to be in a continual cycle of creating by spending time in creation activities like prototyping concepts or scenarios. Inter-disciplinary action is collaborating with other people in separate fields or specialties, therefore gaining a different perception than your own. These three principles help designers create effective and innovative instruction by helping those designers by being flexible, able to adapt easily, and by being perceptive, able to carefully examine situational nuances. These are what keep good designers out of the ditch and on the road to effective, innovative instruction.

            I think all three of these principles McDonald points out are great, but I am pulled more to the inter-disciplinary one. For the mere fact that I like to be around people who are different or in a different field than I am in. In high-school I was chosen ‘friendliest’ as my senior superlative – I think in part because I had friends in all the different ‘cliques.’ I could hang out with the jocks one day and the thespians the next day. I enjoyed being situated in either of their cultures. I believe there is real value in having an appreciation for how others view the world. Now if I could just work on that inner voice who views how I appear on camera…

The Means Principle and Affordance Analysis

The Means Principle and Affordance Analysis

            Have you ever used the back-end of a flashlight to nail up a picture hanger? Or maybe you’ve tried using a coin to loosen or tighten a screw? In a pinch I have, with mixed results. It may take you three times as long to get that screw out or you may smash your finger and scratch up a decent flashlight in the process, but it gets the job done. Yes in a rush we can make do with what’s laying around, but is it best practice? It doesn’t really matter in our day to day affairs around the house whether or not we find the right tool for such trivial dabblings, but when we look at our jobs of educating our youth I think it is beneficial to take our time to find the right tool to use in our learning goal. This week we learned our fifth design principle which is the Means principle. This principle is: Good learning designs reflect technologies chosen after mindful consideration of the cognitive and societal consequences as well as a clear and appropriate connection with content and learning activities. To help us implement this principle in our own teaching designs we also learned the design process of the Affordance analysis. To help us hone our Affordance analysis skills we worked with a ‘considering affordance’ worksheet which helped us choose the right technologies for the learning outcomes we were seeking. We also worked through another sheet which allowed us to match the learning goal to the right tool (technology). These, for me helped synthesize what our fifth design principle is about. It not only forced me to take in the mindful consideration of which technology to use but it also helped me to crystalize what my final learning goal will be before I even start with planning a lesson. Both extremely helpful.

            On paper I’m the ‘Technology teacher’ at my school. I fill a couple of other rolls there as well, but when it comes to direct interactions with our students I’m the ‘technology teacher.’ They all come to the Tech lab, my room, to “learn technology.” Which after going through the first six of this course makes saying what I do that way seem silly. We are always learning and absorbing the content of the culture we are situated in, especially children. They’re such brilliant little detectives that most times if you hand them a new ‘technology’ they’ll figure it out before you do. So going through this course is teaching me that I’m not teaching technology, but that technology is there as a tool to help our students learn, not just how to use that technology, but to learn content, processes, theories, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and what it means to know something. In six weeks, in this first class I’ve used an iPad to search a database, I’ve used my phone to take pictures and merge those pictures into a Word doc, I’ve created an online Kahoot quiz, I’ve used a QR code reader, collaboratively written poetry and a comprehensive treatment for a promotional video, played with and explored uses of an Ozobot as well as the Osmos, and I have created and kept this blog page going as well. The learning of the technologies involved I just mentioned just happened. We weren’t tasked with ‘today you will learn how to create a Kahoot quiz’, our goal for this whole course of ‘Designing for Information Using’ is driving the use of these great tools. The tools are situated in a way that we’re using them and learning them all the while we’re driving to our overall learning goal for this course. It really has been eye opening to me. It’s making me rethink and redesign my role as ‘technology teacher’ at my school and will hopefully open the door to me bringing this information to our classroom teachers to benefit all of the learners at our school.

            We are learning how to be designers, teachers as designers. Learning this fifth design principle of the Means Principle was important for me to see that technology is a very useful tool, but that we must carefully consider which technology we use depending on what our overall learning goal is. We shouldn’t just use what’s laying around, but have a learning purpose for the technologies we use.

The Victorian Internet

The Victorian Internet

By Tom Standage

(A review – by Jim Field)

            The Victorian Internet, published in 1997, tells of the momentous story of the rise of the telegraph and the early pioneers who crafted a new technology into a world changing industry.  It covers the dawn of a robust period in the history of human communication that is continuing to be felt to this day and touches on its rather rapid decline. While Alexander Bell initially set out to improve the telegraph, his telephone quickly replaced the telegraph along with its community, customs, and subculture, yet we still see the foundations that were laid down by the telegraph in our communications with each other today. The internet and email, mobile phones and texting all carry forward the basic principles of what the telegraph accomplished in opening near instantaneous communications with people half-way around the globe. It was inspiring to read of inventors and enterprising men who set upon an idea and went to work crafting the reality of that amazing thought. They toiled through plenty of nay-sayers and through insurmountable set-backs to usher in a new age of human communication. Yet in the face of the people who said it could never be done, these men progressed their inventions far enough and sold the dream well enough that other men with greater monetary means took a chance and financed these unattainable feats.

“The possible’s slow fuse is lit by the Imagination”

-         Emily Dickinson

         

          The book also covers the many similarities between the telegraph and the internet, how in the early days so much optimism swirled around the utopian means that these new technologies could lead to greater world peace, and for as much good people can use them for there will always be bad characters who use them as a vehicle to cheat, steal, swindle and harm others with.

           

            Thinking of what I’ve learned from this book and how it might impact my practice of teaching, I believe what I will most take away is the dedication these men had towards advancing the technologies they invented or the technologies that were around them. How a person’s drive and ambition can conquer the impossible mountain peaks that other’s say can’t be reached will help me to look at my students as engines full of massive amounts of potential. I need to seek out and prod for what motivates them, or if they are so beaten down by past failures or other external factors I need to find a way to spark their imaginations so that they can tap that desire to conquer whatever mountain seems impossible to them. We’re not all going to invent something as great as the telegraph but if I can show them that they can use the grit that’s inside of us all, to achieve a goal - then I have communicated a message that I wanted them to receive.

Vygotsky and Meaningful Learning

Vygotsky and Meaningful Learning

  

            We were warned that Vygotsky’s Mind in Society was going to be a hard read, the second hardest book we’ll read this semester, as it was put to us. It gave me pause when the two quotes at the beginning of the book are from Karl Marx and his partner, Friedrich Engels. Sure, reading a book from one of Russia’s most influential psychologist, with quotes from the father of communism is going to be no problem for a free thinking American such as myself, I thought sarcastically. Much to my delight the book focused solely on the science of Vygotsky’s pioneering in developmental psychology. I found myself diving deeper into trying to understand the principles and theories he sets forth. Quite honestly I began to have more questions as I found myself agreeing with his analytic summations. Questions which I will lay out here.

            I also found a greater appreciation of speech and language, the very thing that separates us from the animals. I found myself listening to conversations differently, listening to my children differently, and listening to the how and why of what my wife was trying to communicate to me through language. Speech really is a special way in which we can connect with other humans, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly – to converse and share our thoughts and feelings, ideas and dreams, hurts and disappointments, not only through speech but through these symbols we call letters so that what we write can be read by many more people than we would ever to be able to speak to, and then these letters and words and sentences can last for years beyond that convey a message that is so uniquely yours, it’s beautiful to think about. It really is such a uniquely human treasure that should be cherished more than the rarest gems in the world. Connecting through speech is truly what defines us as human.  

            The main topics we learned reading Mind in Society are as follows: symbols, tools, cognition, internalization, complex thinking, development, and play. Symbols and intellectual tools are the intermediaries between ourselves and the world. They allow our cognition; memory, attention, ability to categorize, and our perception. By appropriating symbols and internalizing them we’re able make sense of what’s around us. Leading us to complex thinking or high order thinking, where we are not just taking visual clues that are in front of us and reacting to them but we are putting deep thought into independent and deliberate action. The zone of proximal development is the area, or window between actual development, where our readiness, desire and motivation have gotten us to and our potential level of development with guidance from an adult or more capable peer. Finally play, where children go mentally, to figure out how things work, and how they can play with the “rules” that they are situated in in their culture.

            Most of my questions came from the culture I’m situated in, I am a father to three children and I work in a special needs school.

            On page 29 I read the following “…young children are likely to fuse action and speech when responding to both objects and social beings. This fusion of activity is analogous to syncretism in perception…”  My question to this: What of the autistic brain? If signs and words serve children first as a means of social contact with other people, does this account for the lack of social interaction of autistic children?

            The beginning of chapter 2, linking tool use and speech which is a dynamic system of behavior, where does ADHD come into play? Is there some disconnect between this link that allows for or manifest itself as ADHD?

            Chapter 3, the section on ‘social origins of indirect memory’ and the page 39 quote “…the central feature is self-generated stimulation, that is, the creation and sue of artificial stimuli which become the immediate causes of behavior” and the thought of children creating sign operation/meaning lead me to ask is this why a therapist using external aides, such as stuffed animals, to help children to verbalize their thoughts, feelings, traumas, etc… is such an effective tool?

            Also in chapter 3 from the studies on page 48 and 49 measuring pictures as memory aides leads me to ask where does short-term memory recall fall in the measurement of overall intelligence.

            On page 51 in reference to tying a knot on a handkerchief as a reminder, as in a physical aide, does that translate to sports, such as physical objects as performance enhancers, fans put on ‘rally-caps’, athletes have routines or superstitions, or an athlete will blame a bad performance on his shoes or the lighting? Physical objects as either the cause or blame for a performance.

            Onto chapter 4, do we now have better, more comprehensive experimentation methods for higher psychological functions as the S—R methods are limited to elementary psychological functions? The t.v. show Brain Games comes to mind.

            Page 71 tests of increasing choice reaction to stimuli games, how does short-term memory/sign assignment process relate to our overall behavior?

            Page 81 and the assertion from Thorndike that mastery of specific skills and materials does not correlate to mastery of other specific skills, How is this relevant, or how does it translate to autistic/Asperger children who are single focused? Or does it not?

            Chapter 7 covers play and the importance of it to the development of children’s high order thinking, what damage to ‘play’ is being done by handing children phones, or electronic devices to keep their attention, or to keep them quiet?

            In conclusion, as I ask how will what I’ve learned from Vygotsky impact my practice, I think not only of my practice but how it will affect my fathering. I think of children’s play and how their imaginations need the room to run and test and explore, and how I as an educator and a father need to facilitate that more by not only limiting time in front of a device but also by engaging in that imaginative play – a box becomes a car, a stick becomes light-saber, a hand gesture becomes a force-field. I need to become more cognizant of the power of imaginative play. In terms of the zone of proximal development I think I can foster more collaborative projects and provide opportunities for students to work together. So much of our focus is on individualized programs for our students and the accommodations they need as an individual I tend to lose focus on the mutual benefit of joint task and joint learning. I will try to carry with me the appreciation of language as symbols and tools and not try to focus on the words that are coming at me but to try to process what is trying to be communicated to me.

            This course is making me think and forcing my mind to expand by soaking up a lot of great information but most of all it is helping me to think, really think about my practice of teaching. I describe it as mindfulness in educating, we are taking into consideration the weight of the lesson, or principle, or theme, or theory we are trying to teach and then we are to tear it down to get at what ‘it’ really is. Then using our design principles we construct authentic activities, knowledge building activities, constructing activities and finally sharing activities. Now with Vygotsky we need to provide play that’ll lead to higher thinking. With our mindfulness in educating we’re not filling up vessels with inert knowledge but we are to fill our students with the fuel to reach their potential.

Meaningful Learning

Situated Cognition & the Culture of Learning

            Mens et Manus. This is the motto of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From Latin it is translated ‘Mind and Hand’ and represents the founders of MIT’s educational ideals who promoted ‘education for practical application.’ I only know this because I noticed the phrase at the bottom of a colleague’s email signature last year and curiosity got the best of me, so I Googled it up.

            I think it fits in nicely with what we learned this week reading Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. The paper stresses that many of our educational methods assume a separation of knowing and doing. Current educational practices treats knowledge as an independent object devoid of any context of the situations in which it is learned and used. Thus concluding that an education that ignores the situated nature of cognition has defeated its own goal of providing useable knowledge… knowledge with a practical application.

            We learned that our knowledge is constantly evolving with new occasions of use and that we are adding to the construction of our knowledge. To do this we explored the idea of conceptual knowledge as a set of tools, and we should use those tools actively in the culture in which they are used.

            We learned that enculturation, a very natural way in which we learn from the ambient culture around us rather than from explicit teaching, should be included in our practice of education. A way to achieve this is through authentic activity. Authentic activities are meaningful and purposeful activities that one would find in the ordinary practice of the culture. That is we should view teaching as such that, we are not teaching math but creating mathematicians, we are not teaching history but fostering historians, and so on with the various subjects. Knowing that they are not all going to become historians but providing authentic activities from the culture in which historians, et al occupy.

            The paper goes on to describe a method that reminds me of the vocational school that some of my classmates went to for half the day, when I was in high-school. The vocational school was a trade school where students learned various trades, like auto mechanics, carpentry, plumbing, electrical engineering. It was all hands-on learning and the learning was definitely in a culture that more resembled the culture they would encounter in the workplace. Somehow we’ve taken this model out of the more ‘academic’ subjects.

            We learned how modeling, coaching, and then fading is akin to apprenticeship and this approach to teaching will help push learning physical skills into gaining cognitive skills.

            We also learned about the importance of collaborative learning. How providing collective problem solving opportunities, offering multiple roles to students carrying out a cognitive task, drawing out and discussing misconceptions about problem solving strategies, and providing collaborative work skills can accommodate the paper’s authors  proposed new view of knowledge and learning. So in effort to bridge mind and hand there can be a dramatic improvement in learning and a new way to look at education.

            Next we learned about Knowledge of Structure, Process, and Discourse with Content as Vehicle. The emphasis on designing opportunities that help students develop knowledge rather than content descriptions of knowledge. To achieve this teachers must help students grasp the structure of a subject making it more understandable. Learning structural elements of a discipline will help with the retention and relation of content knowledge and therefore be more likely for the structure of knowledge to be transferred to other disciplines. Learning about process is a way for students to make sense of their experience. “Teaching the disciplines as ‘ways to think’ about experience has more lasting consequences than only teaching ‘about’ the disciplines.” (P.Norton) Different disciplines bring their own set of ‘lenses’ when surveying and processing facts. Learning disciplines from their lenses enhances student knowledge. Two ways to approach this is through narrative and expository discourse. Narrative tells the story that can be relatable and helps up develop our sense of self, where expository helps us develop procedures and test to form empirical proof and assure a verifiable reference.

            We also learned the ABCS of Activity – A Design Process. Authentic Activities, Building Knowledge Activities, Constructing Activities, and Sharing Activities are activities for students centered around problem solving learning. We as teachers (designers) should design learning anchored in a problem and these activities help students with their problem solving skills. Authentic means the ordinary practices of a culture, a way to hone emerging knowledge of a discipline. Building Knowledge supports a more meaningful understanding of the content. Constructing is moving knowledge to performance, a chance for students to show what they’re learning. Sharing allows students to receive feedback that may shape or solidify their understanding of a discipline.

            Finally AeCTS – A Lesson Design Process. An Authentic Problem should be a clear authentic situation. So that sustained explorations can prepare learners for what an expert may encounter and an introduction to the tools needed to solve the problem. E for the exit strategy, putting a ribbon on the final outcome, something happens. Clear outcome/product. Learners must understand the outcome or product that is produced from their problem solving. Thinking skills are the process skills needed for the activity that’s been chosen – teachers can model the appropriate thinking needed. Software skills are the tools that teachers can use in an activity that fits with what is needed for problem solving.

            Thinking about all of these things and how they will impact my practice of teaching is a lot to digest! One way it impacted my teaching was this week I ‘created’ the authentic problem of a new staff member at our school. Within the past year she moved to this area. My project for my students was to be able to provide, in written form, three places of interest for her to go and see. They could be places the students have been or places they would like to go. The goal of this project was to help my students craft a word document and to enhance their internet research skills as I requested what times these places of interest would be open, when is the best time to go, and if they cost anything. Walking around the room during this exercise gave me a sense of what things students were struggling with, either with coming up with somewhere to go, or with the Word program itself. The exit strategy for this project once they finish will be to print out their list of suggested sites to see and then I’ll give them to our new staff member. It will be up to her if she want to come in and thank the class. This has been my interpretation of all the knowledge that I’ve learned these past two weeks. Hopefully with this project I’m helping my learners gain knowledge for practical applications.

 

The Saber-Tooth Curriculum

The Saber-Tooth Curriculum

            Fish-grabbing, Wolly-horse-clubbing, Saber-tooth-tiger-scaring, Oh My! You wouldn’t think a book that expounds on an ancient civilization’s survival techniques and how they teach them to their young would fit in with the state of our educational system today, but that’s exactly what this book does.

           

             The Saber-Tooth Curriculum is a book that excoriates the inefficiency in the American education system at the time that it was published in 1939. Written by an author who had been a school superintendent, assistant professor of education, assistant dean, and dean of the college of education, a few titles held by the esteemed Harold R.W. Benjamin. Benjamin wrote under the pseudonym J. Abner Peddiwell after the publishers decided the book should be published as a stunt, not as serious educational material but in a tongue-in-cheek manner to cautiously test reader reaction. It uses a satirical format of a student running into his old professor at a tourist bar in Tijuana and the professor’s subsequent lectures on the educational affairs of that prehistoric society. An educational process he names ‘The Saber-Tooth Curriculum.’ The lectures go into how the traditions of schooling can be so dutifully followed that even in the midst of environmental and cultural changes, an educational system can resist needed changes for the society to survive. Peddiwell –er- Benjamin believed that the education of his times were not responsive enough, or flexible enough to the burgeoning needs of the culture of that time. Much of what he wrote can extrapolate to our current educational state. He speaks of the elders, or those in charge, doing things the same way over & over because they’ve always been done that way. The religion of tradition, I call it, and none can waver.

            Looking at how I as an educator can apply the lessons Benjamin sought to bring to light in his satirical book, I think first I can begin to develop ways to bring living into learning. I can think of ways that learning experiences in life can be brought into the classroom by way of problem solving projects, group projects, and technological tools that we use in everyday life. To look at my students as curious and inquisitive learners who need a guide to help them to discover knowledge more than just content.

  

            In today’s education I believe there is less rigidity to hang onto old ways, but much like a large ocean-liner, the effort and amount of time it takes to change course is not going to happen overnight. There does seem to be more schools, superintendents, deans, and elders willing to accept the fact that we are constantly learning about human behavior and how we learn and look for ways to bring that additive knowledge and understanding into our classrooms. No longer can “academia” set firmly in place the capstone onto the pillar of innovative education, if we are to produce learners who know how to do the things our community needs to have done – while not extinguishing their energy and will that it takes to go do them. 

The Ends Principle

The Ends Principle

There they were, slowly populating on the board in front of us. "Problem Solving" someone stated. "Communication" from another. "Media literacy" a raised voice projected. Quickly, sharply they flew out like darts onto a dart board. Unlike a numbered dartboard, we had no idea where our answers were landing. Filling up the grid in a seemingly unorganized manner our instructor soon made clear to us the acronym that we were to learn. PICKLE. Problem solving, Information using, Community participation, Knowledge, Literacy, and Ethical decision making. All good learning designs to prepare 21st century learners by linking living and learning to the PICKLE. "Teachers may need an apple a day, but learners need a pickle!" was the mantra.

To me this means not taking the living out of the learning and that learning can come from living. Something I hadn't given much thought. So much of my learning in school, many moons ago, was in a sterile, clinical environment where rote learning was the way of the land. I vividly remember squirming in my desk thinking how boring school was. Facts, numbers, equations, formulas... they all ran into a muddled mess that I had no desire to string out and make sense of. The knowledge I did gain did not give me the will and energy to act on it. Dissecting a frog, I remember. Doing projects, I remember. I remember a trigonometry project I created where you had to figure out who assassinated the president from the angle of the bullet. Three suspects were on three different floors of the building. Two people's innocence hung in the balance, can you catch the assassin? I got a very high grade on that project, best grade I had in that class. I think even the teacher was a bit surprised at the grade I earned.

Somehow, being in this privileged position to guide the learning of our young, I've got to devise a way to design a path to the PICKLE patch. Is it through projects? Through group tasks? Through online peripherals? Whatever it may be, it will continue to grow as I travel on this journey and I put effort into leaving the living in the learning so learning can come from living... something a little more structured, something more designed, so I don't feel like I'm blindly throwing darts.

Teachers as Designers

Teachers as Designers

     A pen is all I had in front of me. No paper. No books. We were, after-all, instructed not to bring any books with us to the first class. Instructions that were repeated in a reassuring way when I sat down and asked what we would need? "Nothing" the simple reply. Nothing was exactly what sat in front of most of the other students in the room. Yet I put a pen where a paper or book should be, surely we would need that, I reasoned. The box of what I assumed were handouts sat clearly in front of our instructor, we would get those soon I anticipated. Except it wasn't soon. As the introductions and the name-game fed into a lecture and the lecture led to a power-point presentation my anticipation plunged into a ripple of uneasiness. "When are we going to get those hand-outs?" I pined.

       Our first break came and the chance to stretch my legs eased my desire to put ink to paper, any paper. Together again we learned that there are multiple meanings of 'Digital learning' but it is best stated as "any instructional practice that is effectively using technology to strengthen the student learning experience.”

Finally the hand-outs came. Yes! Paper to write on. The next bit of knowledge handed to us; there is a difference between planning and designing. Explained to us in two different news stories that we read and then discussed. When it comes to the classroom, planning is effective and necessary but it is not design. Design is the distillation scientific formulas and artistic expression, giving purpose and reason to classroom action. ”As a cognitive mode, design depends on “principles rather than theories and heuristics of practice rather than explanations” Laurillard, 2012, p. 1

A Teacher as a designer will build a bridge from their Content, Pedagogical, & Technological knowledge so that effective classroom practice will enhance the learning of their students. To be designers, Teachers must identify design problems, learn to consider and invent possibilities as well as recognize and embrace constraints. They must also integrate design principles, processes, patterns, and peripherals.

            Thinking of myself as a designer I believe it will impact my practice in that I will give more thought to what I am trying to accomplish. I should take the time to ask myself what is my reason for this lesson. What is the purpose of this lesson? Is this something to fill the day or am I enhancing the experience for my students as I guide them to discover knowledge.

Just as the design of the name game we played at the beginning of class taught us that there are different methods of memorization, the design of not having anything in front of me for the first hour of class taught me that I can be an auditory learner and that I should put more value into verbal conversation. We are surrounded by so much noise, not just auditory noise, but visual and tactile noise that just to sit and not be surrounded by stuff and have an active role in conversation was refreshing.

I’ll conclude with my final thoughts: A good plan will accomplish a task, a good design will enhance the experience. There is nothing wrong with completing a task or a list of tasks, as that lends to building confidence, but an enhanced experience that guides you to a discover-able knowledge can open your mind to a hunger to discover more.