I recently finished reading Seymour Papert’s book The Children’s Machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer, and I’ve got lots to say formally about it. But I only have a minute at the moment and I wanted to ask a question. In the book, Papert forwards the idea that we should have as big a body of knowledge about learning and how to learn as we do about teaching and how to teach. (He even postulates at one point that “learning theory” is much more about teaching than it is about actually learning. And I agreed with him. Too often, we think of education that is something that we can do to someone, rather than with someone. We certainly can’t do it for someone.)
Since I’d never actually heard of the word before I read the book, I’m guessing that it’s not a big term/idea in teaching and learning circles. But I don’t know - perhaps I’m out of the academic loop a bit. It seems that the term does surface in some academic arenas, and has for some time, but I can’t get a sense of its meaning in those contexts. I guess I’m writing right now to both ask about your knowledge of the term as well as to ask if you think it’s true that we spend way too much time thinking about teaching without taking the time to think about learning. Or, rather, are we too busy teaching to bother to learn? I’ve read plenty of posts that suggest as much, and in fact, I think I’ve said it myself. If that’s the case, what are we going to do about it?
Papert says it, at one point, this way:
…participants thought of themselves as teachers-in-training rather than as learners. Their awareness of being teachers was preventing them from giving themselves over fully to experiencing what they were doing as intellectually exciting and joyful in its own right, for what it could bring them as private individuals. The major obstacle in the way of teachers becoming learners is inhibition about learning. (p.72 - from this page of quotes, which are worth reading)
It’s frustrating that this isn’t a new idea, but that it’s still revolutionary. Read the book. I’ll give it a more formal review later. Short version: Two thumbs up. Mindstorms is on my nightstand, now, sitting on top of my XO, which is appropriate for so many reasons.
What a great question. I’ve got a longer post that I’d like to write about how we might start thinking about student citizen journalism, but I think it makes almost immediate sense to descend upon a city or school district meeting with a few computers. The teacher can moderate and students can post about the meeting taking place. Later on, the video of the meeting can be combined with the transcript to make for an excellent reflective opportunity.
I think tools like these are perfect for citizen journalists - students or otherwise.
Your turn. Is that a good idea? Do you promote student citizen journalism in your classes? If so, what do you do? If not, why not?
Jeremy posts an interesting question from a teacher:
I am very concerned about a small group of AP Environmental Science students (3) who have taken an aggressive stand opposing my teaching of climate change. I already teach it from the perspective of “here’s the data, figure it out” but they think that I made the data up. I showed them where it came from (NASA and NOAA) and they think it is a conspiracy by the left wing to infiltrate and brainwash the American public.
Normally, I would let it go but these kids are being disruptive and belligerent to the point that I have had to refer them to the administration.
I feel like there are two things I need to do here: 1) diffuse the situation so that we can move forward
2) create a packet of peer reviewed literature that is understandable for hs students
Does anyone out there have any suggestions?
Regards,
Science Teacher
There are some very interesting responses, as well as a ton of great links to resources. Worth a click or two.
I’ve been a fan of CoveritLive since I discovered it during Educon. I’ve used it successfully a couple of times, and intend to use it in the future when it makes sense to. But I wanted a few more options - like multiple authors and the ability to get my data out of their system.
Turns out, so did others. They’ve added multiple author support, automatic moderation of comments, and some other snappy options. It’s a very, very useful tool for capturing events as they happen, both for me and for an audience. (Turns out I learn better, and take better notes, when I’m doing so for someone else.) I find the linear nature of the notes and archive, too, make for a very useful and re-readable dataset. Handy for a backchannel, too.I’m a big fan of what they’re up to, and yes, I probably would pay to use the service, if they get to that. It’s just that good.
(Oh - and I did try the data export - simple embed code. Easy.)
This collection of articles, published as Threshold Magazine - New Directions Spring 2008 by Cable in the Classroom and the KnowledgeWorks Foundation is one of the finest “think bombs” related to education and coming changes that I’ve seen printed on paper. I received a copy by accident, as my predecessor was on just the right mailing list.
There’s a great think piece on open textbooks, and Stephen Downes has a piece in the issue, too, on educational choices and virtual options. Also included is a handy copy of the Future Forces Affecting Education map by KnowledgeWorks. Might be worth getting some extra hard copies to share with your favorite administrator, teacher, school board member, etc. (Here’s the reprint inquiry info. I’ll be calling on Monday.)
Today, 3.14, is honored by many of my math colleagues as Pi Day. In honor of them, and of a fine and playful mathematical constant (Pie aren’t square, they’re round.), I present to you Pi to a 1,000 digits:
Day 1 of my Twitter break began with . . . a quick glance through Twitter. Habit. (Although I did give myself the limit of not posting to Twitter - reading is still okay. I do find Twitter to be quite valuable. But is it much of a vacation if I still scan the site when I start the day? Hmm . . .)
Still, I pledge to not use Twitter until St. Patrick’s Day, just to see what that’s like. I’m certain I’ll miss things - but I am curious to see if that improves the blogging going on here. We’ll see.
I’m wondering if it makes sense to self-impose a “no posting on Twitter” rule for a couple of weeks just to see if it boosts the posting I do here. Anyone every try that? Results? I’m pretty sure Twitter, which I think is completely valuable, entirely saps my will to blog.
It was about a year ago that I wrote a piece for English Journal on teaching “blogging” vs. “writing with blogs” that was pretty much a re-hash of some blog posts that I thought were saying something. The trouble is, I wasn’t sure what they were saying. I’ve been fumbling at this one for a while.
I’ve always found something particularly special about writing online, or at least I’ve learned that there’re more options, more possibilities, and plenty of challenges that make writing online much more complicated than cutting and pasting a Word file into a text box and hitting “submit.”
But most folks that I see beginning to use digital writing spaces aren’t treating them any differently. And I can’t quite figure out why. I also can’t quite figure out how to articulate the differences, even though I think I get some, if not several, of them. And if I can’t articulate them, perhaps I can’t teach them. (Not sure about that, actually - but work with me.)
I think one good way to articulate some of the differences is to tell you a story. Here goes.
Tonight, I’m sitting in a local cafe, enjoying a cup of wicked sweet coffee and some tunes. As I wrote that last sentence, and added the links in, I wondered how you would read it. Are you someone who clicks on any link you see in a blog post? Or are you more like me? I use a browser that shows me the URL of the link I’m pointing to, saving me the trouble of traveling here if, after reading the URL, I see that I don’t need to follow the link, perhaps because I already know the site, or I don’t want to go to the site, because I’m worried about pop-ups, or a virus, or something that I don’t actually want to see. I love that browser, except when it leaks memory.
I could continue, but I think (hope) I’m making my point. I could have written that paragraph without the links - but I would’ve need an awful lot more details to tell you as much as I did with the links. And you each will have worked your way through that paragraph differently. Some of you read and clicked and fiddled. Others of you read differently. (Oh - and here’s a minor nit - but how many of you, in that last sentence, read, ahem, “read” in the past tense? Present tense? Language is hard. But anyway.)
I don’t know what my students do/did when they see blocks of text with links. And I’m 98 percent sure that there wasn’t another teacher in my school who was thinking about how to explain that to students, much less about how they read that text themselves.
Digital texts have the potential to make a big, juicy mess of a linear experience. Or to turn a so-so piece of writing into a masterful collection of references, linktributions, and pointers to other good stuff. My hunch, a rough one, but one I’ve held for a while, is that reading and writing that way makes you (ultimately) a better reader and writer. I just don’t really think I know how to teach that way yet, or at least, I don’t know how to teach other people to think about teaching that way.
Will Richardson asked me recently (well, it was two weeks ago - but that counts as recent if you forgive me the week I spent sick. And I do.) about connective writing, and what a course on it might look like. I blame him for the frustrated typing that I’m up to right now. And the posts that I suspect are forthcoming. (And I’m thankful, too. I needed a push.)
What would such a course look like? What would it cover? How would it differ from a “regular” (I know - bogus term.) 9th or 10th grade high school writing course? How would it be the same? (Why wait until high school? I’ve been thinking through blogs as science or inquiry notebooks at the elementary school level.) What happens when we add video(s)? Pictures? Embedded widgets? I’ve got to believe that some analysis of what links do and how they do it would be a necessary piece of any such course. So, too, would be copious quoting and linking to others, building a network of classroom texts that would be added to the greater networks of the world.
I’d kill to teach that class.
Perhaps I’ve stumbled across another thesis idea. Again. Nuts.
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Postscript - I had thought that perhaps I’d dig into the research on hypertextual writing a bit before I started down this post. I know these ideas aren’t new. But I couldn’t help myself. I made it four pages into this fascinating article before I started writing. Worth a read, I think.
