In my grad class, I start with a question:.  What are the fundamental things we know about how people learn?  At first, they look at me and say not much.  After a few minutes, answers come: interest, hands on, groups, organized, practice, etc.. at times they say, we need to know what they know before we move on. 

I then explain that is why I will not hand out a syllabus this week because I need to know what you already know so that I can tailor the syllabus to meet your needs.  They are surprised by this statement, because, in the past they come and we give a syllabus.  This is interesting, it seems if a syllabus is provided first, we are focused on teaching, not on learning. 

In college, pre-service teachers are asked to prepare lesson plans, for a group of kids and often given an outline to follow as they build. These plans are neat, sequential, and pre-services teachers are encouraged to have a very managed classroom.   However, the plan is one plan for 23 different students with unique brains, how does that work when it comes to student learning, not teaching? 

Often our Professional development, is focused on teaching.  How to use technology, how to create formal assessments,  how to use data, how to read standards, how to etc… You get it.  But for a successful class, focus has to be on learning, not teaching.   How can we begin to change that in the modern classroom? 

 So here we are at a 1-to-1 laptop school. My 12-year-old students are so excited about the project we have been working on; they are interviewing their parents, grandparents, or anyone over 30 to try and answer the essential questions: (1) What does an historian do and how do they do it? (2) How has life and culture changed in American since your interviewee was in 7th Grade?

Students get to play history detective.  They pick someone to interview and then study the time period that the person was in seventh grade. We spent time brainstorming topics to ask about, writing open ended questions and several days researching national and international events that took place during the time their interviewee was in middle school. In the end, they usually build an iMovie that explains their parents (interviewee’s) middle school experience while addressing the essential questions. In years past, we have also use this project to teach iMovie in a failure free way.

Over the years this has produced 100’s of interviews with primary images from the time period that discuss the changes in the world.  Students get to see first hand just how rapidly culture changes and spreads.

I thought that this year would be no different. Just like in years past, we have done the brainstorming, written the questions, interviewed the people and researched the events. Finally, the day has arrived that we devote to learning how to use iMovie to complete this project.  The students finally get to take all of their puzzle pieces and place them together in a digital format to share with classmates and their family.

The media specialist and myself planned what we would teach about iMovie a week in advance. The day came and we began to teach students iMovie. After ten minutes or so we began to notice students starring at us as if we had lobsters crawling out of our ears. They were not getting it, what was rather simple for the previous years students, seemed a daunting task for this year’s students.


It seems a small glitch had occurred. We were teaching on iMovie ‘08 version 7.1.4., the version that all of the faculty computers include.  This year students received new laptops with iMovie ‘09 version 8.0.6. That means everything we just showed the students to do is completely wrong.  Not only were students unaware of how to use iMovie, we just spent 10 minutes showing them the wrong thing to do! Ok, what fix do we make? We will teach enhanced podcasting with links in GarageBand.  GarageBand is a program we use regularly so teaching it at this point in the year would still work well.  Unfortunately, you can guess… faculty have the ’08 version and students have ‘09.

But wait, it gets worse. The sixth graders have the older GarageBand and iMovie HD, so the teachers in the building don’t have a copy of the software that any student in our building has access to!  That also means that the sixth grade is using a completely different version of software than the other students in the building.  It is hard to teacher with comments like: “it won’t look like this, and you don’t click here, but click that.” And “well, I am not sure as I have never used that software or have access to it.” Teaches were not made aware of this issue, nor were we given any training on the new software. I felt frustrated and stupid. It will make for an interesting week.

School started this week.  Just like the last 16 years, I could not sleep for the first two nights.  Tired and that funny feeling in my stomach, I made it to work almost an hour early.  The room was set up and the lesson plan ready for day one.  The students were smiling and bouncing from room to room.  At 12, they still are excited to start a new year.  They seemed open and ready to engage in learning.  By the third day (after a pretty good sleep), I interviewed each student on video into my computer to save for later use.  I asked them three questions:  1.  What are two goals you have for this year?   2.  What is one long term goal you have for life?  3.  What are two things I should know about you?

First, I was shocked how many came into the hall with sweat dripping from their foreheads because they were scared of being on film.  I encouraged each student and gave them some positive feedback.  My goal was to save these files until the end of the year for them to view and comment on.  BUT, of course the new cloud server did not really save them, all were lost.  Oh well. 

What I found most interesting were the comments:  yes, some talked of all A's, Honor Roll, and wealth and fame, but most talked about one word:  confidence. 

I was stumped on this one.  I did not expect these students to say "I lack confidence in my ability."  I don't know why this hit me so hard, but it has forced me to think about  how to move forward.  I know kids gain confidence from doing a task well, taking pride in it.  So, I have to find ways to provide chances for my students to gain confidence from doing great things with our content.  I have a feeling this is going to be a harder task than I thought.

I wonder what else they would tell us about learning, if we really listened?      

A few nights ago I was riding home on the motorcycle and I had a nice long hour and-a-half ride to think about things.  It was completely freeway miles, so I got comfy in my alligator seat, crossed my arms and let my mind wander a bit…while paying attention to the road of course.  I started thinking about something that may be common sense and it may even be too obvious a thing to waste a blog post on, but Garth’s last post relates to what I was thinking.

A lot is being said these days about education and “how we educate”.  When I began in this profession three’ish years ago, I always called myself a teacher.  Somewhere along the way I started to call myself an educator.  I do not think that this was a conscious choice; rather the system assimilating me.  If I became an educator, then that means I am part of the “problem of education”.  It may seem like semantics, but I really started to think about how important the words we choose to define ourselves are. 

Teaching is as old as the human race.  Men taught their sons how to hunt; watch me, and then you do it.  Women taught their daughters how to sow a field; watch me, and then you do it.  Children taught each other games, man taught each other government and religion, so on and so forth.  Education though, is a relatively new event if you look at human history as a linear thing.  So I started thinking about if the two are the same thing or not; is a teacher the same as an educator?

I decided that they are two different ideas.  Education, from its inception and arguable through the present day, has been controlled by the rich and powerful.  The children of elite received an education to help their families remain elite.  Those that received education through religious institutions were taught to control (and remain controlled) by the institution in charge of the education.  It is the same today.  Ideas like No Child Left Behind, school funding, state standardized testing, etc all seem to favor those schools in more affluent areas.  In the past, students have escaped the oppression of formal education: Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Zinn, and while more people are able to emerge as free-thinking spirits, it isn’t enough.

To these ends, I pledge to call myself teacher.  I want to teach students to think, to create, and to be independent.  One of my favorite poets said, “It isn’t enough to question authority, you have to talk to it too”.  Maybe the fix for education is to get rid of formal education, but keep teachers.  Teachers used to be a valued position in society; they were revered and often poor.  I could live my life a happy man as a teacher, and someday I hope to find a way to teach without the bounds and politics of education.

-Mike

Constructivism is an educational theory, usually associated with Jean Piaget, that states humans generate knowledge and meaning from their experiences in a process of accommodation and assimilation (more details).  A person who really buys into Constructivism would practice a pedagogy of active or hands on learning.   I like to think of myself as a progressive educator who follows these principals.   So with that said, I am sitting at a workshop today.  A University professor is discussing the “Sounds” of history.  In the room are 26-27 teachers from northeast Ohio.  We are visiting sites and listening to historical content with discussions about each topic.  The discussions are week at best even with some impressive sound clips and historical data.  Why?

Well, before I give my perception of why, take a minute to read the following Washington Post article by Laura Mortkowitz entitled, “More colleges, professors shutting down laptops and other digital distractions.”  We will come back to this. 

 Computers engage people. Maybe not the way you always want, but they do engage. People want to “connect”, they want to share, they want to explore.  The discussions are week because the people are digging deeper into the sites then the story he is playing and disucssing. They are linking the voices clip to films, website, etc in fact Mike heard the  SNCC founders.   He went on the web, found a 1996 documentary “Rebels with a Cause” watched it, then went to Facebook and “friended” three of the founding members of SNCC, who were interviewed in the documentary.  Needless to say, Mike did not say a great deal in the discussions, but was he “playing” or constructing his own knowledge? 

As noted in the Washington post article, not all schools or professors are shutting down technology; Seton Hall University is giving all incoming students a MacBook and an iPad.  As the world changes and becomes more “flat” we need to find ways to engage people in more complex thinking.  The 21st Century skills and technology go hand in hand. 

We all construct knowledge; we want to connect to our learning.  However, we need the instructor to guide us…not dictate all learning.  Humans are not educated on an assembly line.   As a teacher, I often guide my student toward learning objectives, but let them connect the learning in their own way.  I often talk about the “accidental learning” that takes place in my room.  Students are working to achieve classroom, district, or state goals but learn a large amount beyond that by accidentally reading, seeing, viewing something beyond these objectives. They begin to construct knowledge and learn how to learn.  The true goal of 21st Century skills is to become life long learners—computers and technology help us do that, but they will never replace the guide: teachers.  

So, do you agree?  Let me here your ideas.   Have a good weekend. Garth