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Brian C. Smith

Collaboration - 0 views

  • Collaboration is more than simply the division of labor. It should not be taught as an isolated skill or coerced. Sadly, like many seemingly good ideas, schools seek to mechanize collaboration by turning natural process into a set of measurable skills and multi-year course of study, easily assessed. Some children win, while others fail.
  • Cooperation and collaboration are natural processes. Such skills are useful when the creative process benefits from interdependence. The best collaboration mirrors democracy when individual talents, knowledge, or experiences are contributed to produce something larger than the sum of its parts.
  • Work with your friends. Work with people you trust. Work with people who have different skills or expertise. If that doesn’t produce the result you desire, you will find others to collaborate with. That is how you learn to collaborate. You may teach it, but the students will not stay taught.
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  • The only reason to assign group size is scarcity of materials (we have to share). Even in those largely avoidable scenarios, it hardly matters if group size varies a bit. The main consideration is inactivity by some members when a group is too large.
  • Collaboration is both selfish and selfless. You give of yourself by sharing your talent and expertise, but the collaboration should benefit you as well.
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    Read the whole post.
Brian C. Smith

Constructionism through Design Thinking Projects | FabLearn Fellows - 1 views

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    "Hard problems require time (months), collaboration, creativity, grit and learning new skills to pass a challenge. The true sign of a good hard problem is when the adults do not have all the answers for students, rather the students get to take charge using their own imagination and ambition to reach a goal set by their team."
Martin Leicht

What It Takes to Become an All Project-Based School | PROJECT BASED LEARNING | MindShif... - 0 views

  • New Tech schools are entirely project-based and cross-disciplinary.
  • Students take courses like Bio-literacy, which mesh subjects together, emphasizing that disciplines are not stand-alone endeavors. Technology is woven throughout the school day and at home seamlessly.
  • only 60 percent of assessment is based on content. The other 40 percent is based on what he called “school-wide learning outcomes,” things like written and oral proficiency, work ethic, presentation skills and the ability to give and take feedback. Students can see the project rubric and know where they need to improve their skills.
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  • “Students are working on authentic projects and problems.” He gave an example of a cross curricular physics and environmental science class that studied the physics of power and electricity. “Our students learned those skills and then rewired houses that were destroyed in New Orleans’ 9th Ward.
  • Each school is given a coach who visits throughout the school year, checks on lesson plans, suggests changes and helps troubleshoot problems. And New Tech focuses on nurturing the leadership capacity of principals so they can continue to innovate with teachers.
  • decisions by consensus
  • When kids enter his seventh grade they are so used to the traditional school system, they don’t know how to work collaboratively on projects. “At first their grades go down just because it’s projects. It’s actually kind of harder because you have to be a self-learner.” In traditional schools, kids are constantly being directed, so they don’t have to think for themselves as much
Dana Watts

Reinventing Medical School | Fast Company | Business + Innovation - 1 views

  • former global lead of systems design at IDEO.
  • a leadership-focused year of self-directed study, a team-based curriculum, and a first-of-its-kind Design Institute for Health, a joint collaboration between the Dell Medical School and the College of Fine Arts, developed to apply design thinking to health care challenges and innovation.
  • It will be the first new medical school at a tier 1 research university in more than 50 years (the most recent was Penn State in 1963), giving the school a unique opportunity to build its curriculum, facilities, and priorities from the ground up
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  • There is little valuable learning in that process."
  • Typical medical school curricula force students to memorize inordinate amounts of material, only to forget most of it after they take the exam," says Dr. Susan Cox, executive vice dean for academics and chair of medical education at Dell. "
Brian C. Smith

How Silicon Valley Pushed Coding Into American Classrooms - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “It is essential that efforts to increase computer science instruction, kindergarten through career, be driven by the needs of industry and be developed in partnership with industry.”
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      The danger in this statement is that it says computer science instruction. It has little regard for how students learn or their interests. It is all about industry and jobs. If corporate and industry partners want to help, they must take a backseat to qualified educators, not the other way around. We CAN and MUST do better than industries seeking self-serving initiatives.
  • “They are collaborative partners.”
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      Another slippery statement. What knowledge and understanding to industry partners have regarding how children learn? Industry perspective seems to always be that they see training as learning. Most coding platforms being promoted are designed to program the child. The difference between programming the computer and programming the child is a powerful idea that we must discuss in depth and know well. Otherwise, we lose out on the most meaningful and powerful learning experiences we could provide.
  • “We have a lot of debate in this country about how to teach,” he said, “and not enough debate about what to teach.”
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      Not enough talk about how to learn and how to learn it. Some will say they are one in the same, that's simply not true. Teaching implies something teachers do to students (who may or may not yet be learners). While teaching requires students, learning does not require a teacher or teaching. Learning is the consequence of experience and any teaching designed should reflect this powerful idea. When we leave the decisions about how and what to teach to those outside of education, because they are the area "experts", it becomes about the topic and not the child. We will always fail with that approach.
Martin Leicht

The End of 'Genius' - The New York Times - 0 views

  • JOSHUA WOLF SHENK
  • The elemental collective, of course, is the pair. Two people are the root of social experience — and of creative work.
  • given that our psyches take shape through one-on-one exchanges, we’re likely set up to interact with a single person more openly and deeply than with any group
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  • he found that groups created a sense of community, purpose and audience, but that the truly important work ended up happening in pairs
  • Two people can make their own society
  • The pair is also inherently fluid and flexible
  • Three legs make a table stand in place. Two legs are made for moving
  • But nobody can hide in a pair.
  • The pair is the primary creative unit — not just because pairs produce such a staggering amount of work but also because they help us to grasp the concept of dialectical exchange.
  • And when we listen to creative people describe breakthrough moments that occur when they are alone, they often mention the sensation of having a conversation in their own minds
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    the "pair" take on creativity - no "solo" genius
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