Author: David Wees (page 63 of 97)

I watched this video a while ago (recommend watching it, it’s amazing) and was amazed at how you could find spaces in the home where each word was learned. Today I wondered, what would a similar analysis of our classrooms show?

Could you do an analysis to find out where ideas were first learned? Would it vary from classroom to classroom? Could you tell the difference between a classroom based on social constructivism, and another based on behaviourism? How much does the use of our space matter in learning? Would you even be able to assess the learning of a concept in some classrooms using video analysis? 

This is just a thought experiment. I don’t have any answers to the questions I’ve posed, but I am curious…

Educators, I have some bad news to give you. You aren’t going to get rich. It doesn’t matter how many of your lessons you carefully hoard, or how many great ideas you keep to yourself, none of that is going to make you rich. You will probably never publish your "book" and you aren’t going to get famous.

You could however make a difference. You could give what you’ve got away for free and help make the world a better place. The technology exists to make it relatively easy to share your project ideas, assessments, lesson plans, curriculum, thoughts, whatever you are working on with students. The problem is right now, not enough educators are sharing what they are doing.

The main reason we as educators do not share more of what we do, is that we lack time. We don’t see the value in sharing what we do because it takes effort to upload & share our ideas, and the return is not immediate obvious. Getting that test written, or deciding what you are going to cover for the next week is tedious. To this I say, let your students help you out. Instead of having your students write summaries and rewrite notes from class, have them share the great ideas you come up with collectively with the world. Enable your students to help you. Petition your administration for collaboration time to polish your ideas with your colleagues and then share the result with the world.

Another reason not to share resources is that what we do is fairly specific to our group of students. Many of us customize what we do to the particular group of students we have. To this I say, share the core of what you are doing then, and not all of the details which make it work for your specific case.

Michael Nielsen makes the case in the TED video for Open Science, but in my mind, the same should hold true for education. The resources you make for your classes should be owned by the public, since in the long run, we all benefit. We need to move toward a more open collective experience in education, an Open Education, rather than our current isolated walled garden approach.

In the video above, shared by Dan Colman this morning on the Open Culture blog, Richard Feynman makes this powerful statement.

It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is, if it disagrees with [the] experiment, it’s wrong. – Richard Feynman

How would we apply this to education?

We should look at what is working and decide our policies based on the evidence. We should be looking at data, which should have a broad spectrum of types (just like scientific data has) and use it to help determine policy. We need to hold true to Feynmann’s process as well, which is to make a guess as to what will work, decide what the consequences of those actions would be, and then find a way to determine if this is true or not.

There are a number of initiatives in education which either lack data to support their implementation, or which have contradictory evidence as to their effectiveness. For example, various influential people have been promoting the idea of merit pay for teachers, for which the evidence is inconclusive. In other words, someone had an interesting guess about how education works (teachers will work harder for the chance at more money) and drew the conclusion that student learning would improve as a result (as measured by one form of assessment, a standardized test), and the results of the experiment have not shown a result one way or the other (but have shown that when you dangle a big enough carrot in front of people, they will cheat to get it).

My guess is that the schools that work the best start with the premise that teachers should have sufficient autonomy and support to master their craft, and someone (parents, school, or teachers) provides the resources (food, clothing, shelter, safety, supplies, technology) for their children to succeed. I predict that in such schools you would see higher engagement in learning from administrators, teachers, students, parents, and the community. 

Who is willing to do an experiment to see if my guess is right?

My mom, my son and I went outside today and looked for signs of Spring together.

(click on the photos to view them in a larger size)

We found flowers blooming, buds and leaves on trees, new plants rising out of the soil, and a nest of baby spiders. My son was very interested in all these signs of spring and followed us all over my mother’s property while we searched for more signs of Spring.

My son has the advantage that he has a grandmother with a house on a small island nestled in a forest and with a nice garden. As I walked around the garden, I felt very fortunate to have the ability to explore nature with my son. In our home in Vancouver, there are signs that Spring is here, but they are harder to find amid the concrete jungle. I can’t imagine what it would be like if your home was less "green" than Vancouver. I rememembered, for example, that in New York City that there were a lot fewer green spaces than in Vancouver.

What do we do for children who do not live in places where the coming of Spring (or even the change of seasons in nature) is obvious? How can we ensure that all children get to experience nature?

More importantly, what do we do for children who live in places like this?

image credit: gtzecosan on Flickr

I know that our world is not fair, but it worries me that it is becoming less fair in many ways rather than more fair. I worry that the vision I would like to see for our future, where we all live in a sustainable world, is much different than what some of our leaders envision. When I see our own social services eroding, and less concern for the living conditions of people abroad from our local governments, it makes me worry, and wonder what I can do to work toward a brighter future.

Reposted with permission from my school’s monthly magazine, the Imprint.

Stratford Hall is not a school that uses carrots and sticks to get students to perform. Instead, we generally rely on building on students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. Daniel Pink, a researcher in the area of what motivates us all, says (in his book Drive) that when people are working on work “which requires even rudimentary cognitive ability,” they are actually demotivated by reward systems. Instead, Pink suggests, people are motivated strongly by the ability to demonstrate autonomy, mastery, and purpose. You can watch a summary video of his ideas here:

http://wees.it/danielpink

Autonomy

For me, autonomy means that students need to have some choice in what they do. I’ve noticed that my students tend to put more effort into assignments for which they have some opportunity for choice, and the ability to demonstrate their creativity.

For example, we did an assignment at the beginning of Science 8 last year where students had to “use a creative method to help remember the parts and functions of a cell.” Some students wrote haikus, some students did raps, and some students created videos. As the assignment was formative in nature, I never graded the submissions, except to give students descriptive feedback about their work. We shared the work in class. That unit we did a summative assessment on the parts of a cell, and most students achieved a 6 or 7 (note: 7 is the maximum score for an assessment in the International Baccalaureate). What was even more interesting to me was that, about seven months later, one of the students discovered the video of her rap. On her own time, and completely without any push from me, she decided to redo her rap video. She spent another several hours working on her video and then re-shared the new video with the class. Before this exercise, I couldn’t have imagined a student taking a prescriptive assignment and ever giving it another thought.

Mastery

Mastery means that we want to get better at doing things. It’s fun to become an expert at something, which is why so many of our students practice playing music on their own time. They have complete control over their learning, and they can see themselves improving. I think we do this really well. We have lots of opportunities at Stratford Hall for students to find things that interest them and to follow those interests. We have the PYP exhibition in 5th grade, the MYP personal project in the 10th grade, and the extended essay in the IB Diploma, for example. We also have a rich variety of elective subjects, especially considering the size of our school. These elective subjects are crucial for allowing students to follow their passions and develop mastery.

Purpose

Purpose is a key element of motivation as well. In schools, for me, this means that the learning students do has relevance, and that there is an obvious result and effect students can see from what they do. For example, Harry Armstrong in grade 11 is working to help run the MUN club. He gets nothing for this (except possibly a small bonus to his likelihood of being accepted to college because of his extra-curricular activities) and it takes a huge amount of time. We were exchanging emails over the weekend about what we were going to do on Tuesday, and it was clear by the discussions that happened during the day that a lot more emails had been exchanged amongst the students that I hadn’t been included on. Harry does this work for the MUN because he sees that he has an important role to play, and that the activity has purpose. He wants the younger students to get better at debating and to understand how the MUN functions.

More generally, we see purpose in our global outreach. Many of our students work extra hard to help make that program function, and, although I know the excitement of going to a far-away place is the draw for some of them, when they come back from their trips it is interesting to see how many of them continue to work hard for the program. The learning doesn’t stop at the end of the trip; it continues, hopefully, for the rest of their lives.

So if we want students to become more self-directed in their learning, and more motivated to work hard to succeed, we need to find ways to give them autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

(Created by a Stratford Hall student in 6th grade)

One way that we do this is through the use of technology. Students are able to practice using technology skills over a number of years, and will master various forms of technology. They are given the opportunity for autonomy through the enormous amount of choice and opportunity to be creative through different technologies. Further, they can see purpose in what they do, given that learning the uses of technology is helping to prepare them for a future outside of our school.

For example, during Arts Week, we had a session on using Google Sketchup to create artwork for video games. Once they had some of the basic skills in place, they were given the instructions, “play with this and see what you can get.” Afterwards, they attended a workshop wherein the CEO of a small special effects company provided some background on what goes into creating special effects for movies, and students could see from the style of artwork he presented that a tool like Google Sketchup could be useful in sketching out ideas for use in movies.

(Created by a Stratford Hall student, 12th grade)

(Created by a Stratford Hall student, 12th grade)

There are also some interesting examples of using technology in Photography class, for example, where Mr. Wheeler’s students have no limits to their imagination.

(Created by a Stratford Hall student, 9th grade)

I’d also recommend checking out this excellent video by some of our grade 9 Global Challenges students. http://wees.it/watercrisis