Contents contributed and discussions participated by Brian C. Smith - Modern Learning

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Will the coronavirus infect education, too? The risk of a radical shift to online learn... - 0 views

shared by Brian C. Smith on 11 Apr 20 - No Cached

Learning certainly involves the mind, but also interactions between students, teacher and student, and learning spaces and tools.
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Though online models may support some of those interactions, they only scratch the surface when it comes to offering diverse, rich, and multimodal educational experiences.
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Knowledge is not transmitted, it is constructed when we bring our prior understanding in interaction with new ideas, experiences, and environments.
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extensive research showing that the production and maintenance of an online course can be even more expensive than its offline counterpart.
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the potential of new technology is not in maintaining the status quo but in upending it.
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New and emerging technologies can instead be used to tweak or enhance existing structures and systems in ways that leverage their particular educational affordances.
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we can view this as an opportunity to applaud the enormous effort to flexibly adapt to new educational modes under unprecedented circumstances — and, as the dust settles, invite these professionals (rather than corporations or venture capitalists) to be the ones to chart the course forward.
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An Ode to Maker Camp: What Makes a Maker? Childhood - 0 views

makezine.com/...maker-camp-childhood MakerEd design designthinking joy creativity maker making

shared by Brian C. Smith on 15 Aug 17 - No Cached

Dr. Guilford’s question: “How are you going to design something if you’ve never built anything?”
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How are you going to build something if you’ve never taken something apart?
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How are you going to come up with interesting ideas and solutions if you’ve never been allowed to play with physical and digital bits and pieces?
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It takes a playful, curious person to take things apart and imagine new ways to put the parts back together.
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Youthful creativity combined with readily available materials often leads to a whirlwind of wonderful things.
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Amon Milner, a maker/educator, what a “maker” was, he replied that “[all] people are makers. And the conditions in which people can grow up and have that supported and still do it into adulthood is a very special person… Every [child] is a maker and some get to stay that way longer.”
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Brian C. Smith on 15 Aug 17

How are you going to design something if you've never built anything?

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">How are you going to design something if you've never built anything?</div>

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

www.nytimes.com/...ce-coding-apple-microsoft.html

shared by Brian C. Smith on 29 Jun 17 - No Cached

“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 on 29 Jun 17
  
  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.
  
  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">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.</div>
  
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“They are collaborative partners.”
- Brian C. Smith on 29 Jun 17
  
  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.
  
  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">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.</div>
  
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“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 on 29 Jun 17
  
  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.
  
  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">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.</div>
  
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Collaboration - 0 views

stager.tv/blog collaboration

shared by Brian C. Smith on 14 Apr 17 - No Cached

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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Brian C. Smith on 14 Apr 17

Read the whole post.

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technology - Practical Theory - 0 views

practicaltheory.org/...technology-2 technology modernlearning

shared by Brian C. Smith on 13 Apr 17 - No Cached

We need to understand that until we stop fetishizing technology by making it the focal point of the work every time we pull it out of the closet, we will never move past the notion of “technology integration” to a place of “modern learning.”
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The idea that technology must be invisible in school is simply this: Using technology to inquire, to create, to share, to research, to learn is not and should not be notable anymore. It should simply be a matter of course.Using technology in school is not the point – learning is.
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There are still moments when we learn about the technology itself, and that’s a good thing. Whether it is in a computer science class where students are learning to program, or it is in a technology infusion workshop where we help students to learn how to fully integrate the technology into their sense of themselves as a student and citizen, there are moments where we — student and teachers — make the invisible visible.
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both students and teachers should have moments of reflection of how the tools affect the learning. But there’s a big leap between understanding how the tool both is vital to and transformative to the work and making the work always about the tool.
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Brian C. Smith on 13 Apr 17

Lehmann offers an important context for thinking about learning in a technology-rich world.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Lehmann offers an important context for thinking about learning in a technology-rich world.</div>

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Teachers Going Gradeless - Arthur Chiaravalli - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...s-going-gradeless-50d621c14cad grading assessment student-centered

shared by Brian C. Smith on 13 Apr 17 - No Cached

study showed that scores alone made students either complacent or unmotivated depending on how well they did. Scores with comments were just as ineffective in that students focused entirely on the score and ignored the comments. Surprisingly, it was the students who received comments alone that demonstrated the most improvement.
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student self-assessment/self-grading topped the list of educational interventions with the highest effect size. By teaching students how to accurately self-assess based on clear criteria, teachers empower them to become “self-regulated learners” able to monitor, regulate, and guide their own learning.
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The reason students never develop these traits is that our monopoly on assessment, feedback, and grading has trained students to adopt an attitude of total passivity in the learning process.
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For some of us, the word gradeless means to grade less, that is, limiting the impact of grades within the context of current constraints. Some are just trying to get away from toxic assessment and grading practices, like assessments with no opportunity to redo or retake or zeroes on the mathematically disproportionate 100-point scale.
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For others, gradeless means without grades, that is, avoiding the damaging and demotivating effects of grades entirely. These teachers are trying to put the focus squarely on learning, eliminating grades in favor of feedback and growth.
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