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Jim Tiffin Jr

9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should "Unsettle" Us | The Creativity Post - 0 views

  • there are a number of practices in our current systems of schooling that “unsettle” us, primarily because they don’t comport with what Seymour Papert calls our “stock of intuitive, empathic, common sense knowledge about learning.”
  • Yet we continue to focus our efforts primarily on content knowledge, as is evidenced by the focus of our assessments.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Again, assessment is the most powerful lever for changing teacher practice.
  • in many cases, these practices are attempting to do “the wrong thing right” rather than “do the right thing” in the first place.
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  • the new contexts for modern learning forged by the networked world in which we now live are creating an imperative for new ways of thinking about our work in schools.
  • notes, “For more than 75 years, studies have consistently found that only a small fraction of what is learned in the classroom is retained even a year after learning.” That’s primarily because the curriculum and classroom work they experience has little or no relevance to students’ real lives.
  • The reality in K-12 schooling today is that the majority of what we assess, content, knowledge, and basic skills, is the easiest to assess, not the most important.
  • by the way, let’s stop pretending that we can solve the engagement problem by handing kids iPads or other technologies. Hand them more agency over their own learning instead.
  • When we look at the things that each of us has learned most deeply in our lives, the same certain conditions almost always apply: Among other things, we had an interest and a passion for the topic, we had a real, authentic purpose in learning it, we had agency and choice, deciding what, when, where, and with whom we learned it, and we had fun learning it even if some of it was “hard fun.”
  • But in the vast majority of curriculum driven schools, however, students sit and wait to be told what to learn, when to learn it, how to learn it, and how they’ll be assessed on it. Rarely do they get to choose, and just as rarely does the learning they do in class have any impact beyond the classroom walls.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      I especially like this last part about "impact beyond the classroom walls."
  • But what’s also notable about those practices is that we rarely want to discuss them aloud, content instead to let them hover silently in the background of our work.
  • It’s much more difficult to assess the literacies, skills, and dispositions that are required to succeed and lead a healthy, happy life, especially in a world where answers are everywhere via the technologies we carry in our pockets. In that world, creativity, curiosity, a change mindset, the ability to create, connect, and participate in networks…all of those are now required, yet few of those are currently assessed at all.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      This reminds me of the quote by Alvin Toffle: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
  • We need to stop training students for exams that computers can pass.”
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      **************DING DING DING DING****************** Winner!!! :-)
  • We know that grades, not learning, are the outcomes that students and parents are most interested in.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      This makes me so sad...
  • antidisciplinary thinking and doing
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Curious what this means...
  • To quote Mitch Resnick* again,
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      More props from Mitch Resnick again. So many people here that have been square in the radar of Gary Stager, CMK, and MIT. Also, in order to open this PDF link from the post: (*Use the password "reviewer" to open the pdf.)
  • we know that much of what every student in 1894 was supposed to learn isn’t really what every student in 2015 needs to learn. Yet we seem loathe to mess with the recipe. And as Seymour Papert so famously asks, now that we have access to pretty much all there is to know, “what one-billionth of one percent” are we going to choose to teach in school?
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      More props to Seymour Papert in this article.
  • there is a strong argument building that we have reached “peak education” as we continue to do try to do the wrong thing right and get “wronger” in the process.
  • tacit knowledge and the ability to learn from others, in the moment, both face to face and in networks is vastly more important and effective.
  • Those that will flourish in the modern world will be those who can learn what they need to learn “just in time” from a variety of networks and sources and experiences.
  • put these unsettling truths front and center in our conversations about education
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Who should be having these conversations?
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    An article that calls to mind many of the ideas discusses in David Perkins' 'Futurewise". The idea that sticks in my mind the most is after reading this article is: "It's not about just in case, it's about just in time" which is a reference to #9 A list of things that we don't really want to talk about in education. 1. We know that most of our students will forget most of the content that they "learn" in school. 2. We know that most of our students are bored and disengaged in school. 3. We know that deep, lasting learning requires conditions that schools and classrooms simply were not built for. 4. We know that we're not assessing many of the things that really matter for future success. 5. We know that grades, not learning, are the outcomes that students and parents are most interested in. 6. We know that curriculum is just a guess. 7. We know that separating learning into discrete subjects and time blocks is not the best way to prepare kids for the real world. 8. We know (I think) that the system of education as currently constructed is not adequately preparing kids for what follows if and when they graduate. 9. And finally, we know that learning that sticks is usually learned informally, that explicit knowledge accounts for very little of our success in most professions.
Jim Tiffin Jr

Experiential Learning | Granted, and... - 0 views

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    A post by Grant Wiggins, stressing the importance of of how to use hands-on projects and rich experiences to properly frame learning: "If you were going to learn carpentry to build a chair, then "The learning is not the chair; it is the learning about learning about chairs, chair-making and oneself."" The questions Grant would ask at the end of his Socratic Seminars are powerful ones to consider asking in other learning events.
Jim Tiffin Jr

When Grading Harms Student Learning | Edutopia - 1 views

  • Is grading the focus, or is learning the focus?
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      A simple, straightforward reminder of what assessment is for.
  • Zeros do not reflect student learning. They reflect compliance.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Exactly.
  • a deduction in points. Not only didn't this correct the behavior, but it also meant that behavioral issues were clouding the overall grade report. Instead of reflecting that students had learned, the grade served as an inaccurate reflection of the learning goal.
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  • Students should learn the responsibility of turning in work on time, but not at the cost of a grade that doesn't actually represent learning.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      I completely agree with this point. But admittedly, I still am not sure how it would work in practice... I totally realize that the grades we give as teachers are completely under the school's control - we can go back and change grades even after the course has ended if we need to. But at the core of my question is, "What is the leverage (if that is the right word) that we can use to help students learn that responsibility?" Sports and pulling privileges come to mind, but what else is there. I wonder what other teachers have used for this situation? 
  • Many of our assignments are "practice," assigned for students to build fluency and practice a content or skill. Students are often "coming to know" rather than truly knowing.
  • Practice assignments and homework can be assessed, but they shouldn't be graded.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      An excellent distinction!
  • we should formatively assess our students and give everyone access to the "photo album" of learning rather than a single "snapshot."
  • We've all been in a situation where grading piles up, and so we put the class on a task to make time for grading.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Guilty :-(
  • Teaching and learning should take precedence over grading and entering grades into grade books. If educators are spending an inordinate amount of time grading rather than teaching and assessing students, then something needs to change.
  • Our work as educators is providing hope to our students. If I use zeros, points off for late work, and the like as tools for compliance, I don't create hope. Instead, I create fear of failure and anxiety in learning. If we truly want our classrooms to be places for hope, then our grading practices must align with that mission.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      +1!
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    A right-to-the-point article on how teacher grading practices can interfere with the learning philosophy of a classroom.
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    A right-to-the-point article on how teacher grading practices can interfere with the learning philosophy of a classroom.
Bo Adams

Playful learning: Where a rich curriculum meets a playful pedagogy | Preschool Matters.... - 1 views

  • Playful learning is a whole-child approach to education that includes both free play and guided play.
  • It refers to play in a structured environment around a general curricular goal that is designed to stimulate children’s natural curiosity, exploration, and play with learning-oriented materials.[xxii]  In guided play, learning remains child-directed. This is a key point.  Children learn targeted information through exploration of a well-designed and structured environment (e.g. Montessori[xxiii]) and through the support of adults who ask open-ended questions to gently guide the child’s exploration.
  • Guided play allows children to become engaged; didactic instruction helps them memorize but not transfer what they have learned.
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  • Guided play helps constrain what children should be focusing on; free play leaves the field too open and does not help children focus on the target outcomes.
  • It is possible to have a curriculum rich in learning goals that is delivered in a playful pedagogy.
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    "The Capulets and Montagues of early childhood have long battled over their vision for a perfect preschool education.  Should young children be immersed in a core curriculum replete with numbers and letters or in a playful context that stimulates creative discovery?  The 'preschool war' leaves educators torn and embattled politicians in deadlock.  Playful learning offers one way to reframe the debate by nesting a rich core curriculum within a playful pedagogy." HT @kellyBKelly2001
Bo Adams

American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn't Exist | WIRED - 0 views

  • We “learn,” and after this we “do.” We go to school and then we go to work. This approach does not map very well to personal and professional success in America today. Learning and doing have become inseparable in the face of conditions that invite us to discover.
  • In such conditions the futures of law, medicine, philosophy, engineering, and agriculture – with just about every other field – are to be rediscovered.
    • Bo Adams
       
      In this paragraph there are so many "project starters" that one could design an entire "curriculum" to weave them into an advanced problem solving component to school!
  • Americans need to learn how to discover.
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  • Against this arresting background, an exciting new kind of learning is taking place in America. Alternatively framed as maker classes, after-school innovation programs, and innovation prizes, these programs are frequently not framed as learning at all.
  • Failing to create a new way of learning adapted to contemporary circumstances might be a national disaster.
  • Discovery has always provoked interest, but how one discovers may today interest us even more.
  • in the course I teach, How to Create Things and Have Them Matter, students are asked to look, listen, and discover, using their own creative genius, while observing contemporary phenomena that matter today.
  • Learning by an original and personal process of discovery is a trend on many US university campuses
  • Success brings not just a good grade, or the financial reward of a prize. It brings the satisfaction that one can realize dreams, and thrive, in a world framed by major dramatic questions. And this fans the kind of passion that propels an innovator along a long creative career.
  • Culture labs conduct or invite experiments in art and design to explore contemporary questions that seem hard or even impossible to address in more conventional science and engineering labs.
  • The culture lab is the latest indication that learning is changing in America. It cannot happen too fast.
  • we need to get smarter in ways that match the challenges we now face.
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    "Our kids learn within a system of education devised for a world that increasingly does not exist." HT @MeghanCureton & Greg Todd Jones (two colleagues in significantly different worlds who sent me the link at exactly the same time.)
Jim Tiffin Jr

All You Need to Know About the 'Learning Styles' Myth, in Two Minutes | WIRED - 0 views

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    Article discussing the lack of evidence supporting this "urban legend" in education: learning styles. Suggest catering to learning styles of students may be doing more harm than good. Says the nature of the content being learned should dictate, along with the experience of the learner. Article includes many links to research, books, and other articles.
Bo Adams

Implementing the Project Approach in an Inclusive Classroom: A Teacher's First Attempt ... - 0 views

  • I wanted the children in my classroom to be motivated, authentically engaged, and excited to learn. I wanted them to take hold of their learning and drive their own experiences. The children were learning; still, I felt that their experiences should be more personal than I had been able to provide using a teacher-derived curriculum. I thought this could be best accomplished in an open-ended environment where children are free to explore and follow their interests.
  • John Dewey was among the first to suggest that an ideal way for children to learn is by planning their own activities and implementing those plans, thereby providing opportunities for multilevel instruction, cooperative learning, peer support, and individualized learning
Shelley Clifford

Every Person Inspired to Create - 1 views

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    Mary shared this with me. Great language: Students will learn and work in RE-DESIGNED LEARNING SPACES that include THINK SPACES and CREATION LABS designed to allow students to exhibit their learning through hands-on experiences. Students will work through CROSS-AGED CONNECTIONS allowing students to engage with students outside of their traditional grade level and ENHANCE SOCIAL AND ACADEMIC GROWTH. Students will EXHIBIT LEARNING of state standards through multiple avenues. In addition to traditional standardized tests, authentic PERFORMANCE BASED EXHIBITIONS will be used to measure learning.
Jim Tiffin Jr

Let 'Em Out! The Many Benefits of Outdoor Play In Kindergarten | MindShift | KQED News - 0 views

  • With no explicit math or literacy taught until first grade, the Swiss have no set goals for kindergartners beyond a few measurements, like using scissors and writing one’s own name. They instead have chosen to focus on the social interaction and emotional well-being found in free play.
  • With many parents and educators overwhelmed by the amount of academics required for kindergartners — and the testing requirements at that age  — it’s no surprise that the forest kindergarten, and the passion for bringing more free play to young children during the school day, is catching on stateside.
  • “So much of what is going on and the kind of play they do, symbolic play, is really pre-reading,” Molomot said. “It’s a very important foundation for reading.
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  • You’d be surprised at the importance of play.
  • Scenes of rosy-faced children building forts in the snow are presented in sharp contrast to the academic (and mostly indoor) kindergarten in New Haven, Connecticut, where a normal day is packed full of orderly activities: morning meeting, readers’ workshop, writers’ workshop, a special activity (like art, gym, and music), lunch and recess, storytime, “choice” (a fancy word for play), math centers, then closing meeting.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      I would like to see this movie.
  • Donnery notices that the gross motor skills of many of her kindergartners are underdeveloped, noting that usually means that fine motor skills are also lacking. “Developing those gross motor skills is just critical, can impact so much of later learning,” she said.
  • lacking in the attention needed to learn, with more than 10 percent of the school population diagnosed with some kind of attention disorder.
  • occupational therapist Angela Hanscom opined in the Washington Post that there’s good reason our kids are so fidgety: more and more students come to class without having enough core strength and balance to hold their bodies still long enough to learn.
  • “In order for children to learn, they need to be able to pay attention. In order to pay attention, we need to let them move.”
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      But this has to be more than just a wiggle stool or yoga ball... HMW get greater movement into Kindergarten? (and it need not just be in the Kindergarten classroom)
  • A recent study by psychologists at the University of Colorado shows an even stronger reason for free play: children who experienced more undirected free play showed signs of stronger executive function, a strong predictor of success in school. “The more time that children spent in less-structured activities,” wrote researchers, “the better their self-directed executive functioning.”
  • Reading and recess are important enough that we need to do both.
  • While this kind of adult-led movement is a far cry from the nearly unstructured free play of a forest kindergarten, it does serve the school’s purpose of high academic standards for their kindergartners, in hopes this prepares them for future academic success.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Note that it says "hope"...
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    Article contrasting two different approaches to Kindergarten - one outdoor-based and one indoor-based. Full of links to the research regarding the claims made in the article. Additionally, more language around executive function, and its importance for students, is used.
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    Article contrasting two different approaches to Kindergarten - one outdoor-based and one indoor-based. Full of links to the research regarding the claims made in the article. Additionally, more language around executive function, and its importance for students, is used.
Bo Adams

8 EduWins of 2013 | Edutopia - 0 views

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    "We're always hearing about how education is so messed up -- so often, the conversation focuses on all the negatives. But there are also plenty of "EduWins," too -- awesome ideas, videos, people, programs, practices, products, Tweeters, teachers, and technologies that are making a difference and changing the lives of real students on a global scale. Indeed, as technology continues to quietly revolutionize learning, and models like project-based learning become more broadly accepted, and neuroscience deepens our understanding of how our miraculous brains actually work, it is no surprise that so much is changing in education. And -- as with any change -- there is the good and the bad. So we asked our intrepid team of bloggers to reflect on this year's biggest eduwins, and here are their thoughts."
Nicole Martin

Why some schools are giving letter grades a fail - The Globe and Mail - 1 views

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    We don't give grades... because we give more descriptive feedback. I think it would be interesting to see of we notice any increase in learning since we switched - or if kids' attitudes/beliefs about learning changed. I think standards-based grading has increased teacher understanding of learning outcomes and allowed more flexibility in designing learning experiences and assessment.
Nicole Martin

ISTE Learning and Leading - 0 views

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    maker movement info
Bo Adams

Transforming Education: The One Thing I'd Change in 2014 | Edutopia - 1 views

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    "Learning to listen doesn't mean that we stop all other work. It doesn't mean that the principal ceases to lead from a collaboratively built, living vision; it doesn't mean that teachers stop offering challenging texts or allow their classrooms to become unruly. It would mean that we'd pay much more attention to how we communicate with each other, to how we listen to each other. Authentic dialogue could lead to stronger communities, to deeper understandings across difference, and to finding creative solutions to the problems that exist in our schools and country. That's my hope for 2014: that we learn how to slow down, listen, and effectively communicate with each other."
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    We need to remember this when we create parent questionnaires in August. This is a great read for Eileen and my Project Zero presentation too. Listen!!
ehayes38

What Is Competency-Based Learning For? | GOA - 2 views

  • deeper learning results from students finding value and joy in rigorous, relevant learning experiences.
Bo Adams

One Simple Practice That Will Revolutionize Your Career | Accidental Creative - 2 views

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    "Cultivating a deep well of stimuli from which to cull insights and apply them to your work is one of the most effective methods I've encountered for setting yourself up to thrive in the create on demand world." Provides some pointers for developing a "daily study," or what I call my personal learning plan (the morning part)... http://itsaboutlearning.wordpress.com/plp/ [HT @tara_supersub - a former student who quickly became one of my teachers.]
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    I love the intentionality of study, apply, and share. I also like your map. What did you use it create it?
Bo Adams

What Would Be a Radically Different Vision of School? | MindShift - 1 views

  • “We’re a place that can get kids into college.” Now families clamor to get their students into the school, but they didn’t trust the idea at the outset.
  • “Modern learning is about the ability to self-organize your education, to create meaning for things that have value in the world and not answer to this institution,”
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    ""Modern learning is about the ability to self-organize your education, to create meaning for things that have value in the world and not answer to this institution," Richardson said."
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    I hear you, but I don't know how to do that much less lead an effort to do that school-wide.
Jim Tiffin Jr

The Backwards Brain Bicycle - Smarter Every Day 133 - YouTube - 0 views

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    "Knowledge does not equal understanding." How difficult it is for adults to unlearn something, but not as difficult for children to do so. Emphasis is on how our brain works for storing ideas, but there are a multitude of lessons here for educators to consider.
Shelley Clifford

American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn't Exist | WIRED - 0 views

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    Learning by an original and personal process of discovery is a trend on many US university campuses, like Stanford University, MIT, and Arizona State University. It also shows up in middle school, high school and after school programs. Discovery, as intriguing process, has become a powerful theme in contemporary culture and entertainment. In art and design galleries, and many museums, artists and designers...
Jim Tiffin Jr

Hands on ≠ Minds on - 0 views

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    Great example, and by that I mean "really awful" example, of how activities and experiences are not always powerful learning moments.
Shelley Clifford

32 Habits That Make Thinkers - 1 views

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    by Terry Heick The difference between students and learners is something we've discussed before. On the surface it's a matter of tone and compliance, but it also has to do with purpose-why are they learning? How much of themselves are invested in the process? And does it lead to personal change, or mere performance?
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