Chapter 7
Quote: The concept of play is both complex and complicated. Nevertheless, play has been most often regarded as antithetical to the most stable pillars of learning in the twentieth century. It is the opposite of work. It is fun, rather than serious. And its connection to learning is secondary or incidental. Question: How did play become such a taboo in education? How did it separate from the process of learning to the degree that it exists today? Today students only play during recess time. Connection: The same thing that happened to play happens to technology in a classroom where the teacher sees technology as separate from learning. Some teachers use technology as a pacifier. Students only use it when they are good or in order to prevent them from being unruly. Just like Douglas and Seely Brown have stated that play is an integral part of education, so is technology. Epiphany: I have always enjoyed including an element of play into learning concepts. After reading this book and specifically this quote I see play is more important than I previously thought. From now on I plan to infuse time for play and time to create into concepts that I teach. I need to bring more art and technology into my classroom. Chapter 8 Quote: Through participation in social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo (among others) as well as instant and text messaging, young people are constructing new social norms and forms of media literacy in networked public culture that reflect the enhanced role of media in their lives. Question: Is someone tracking trends in social media to see what changes these trends bring about? Connection: Trends in social media seems to be like trends in language development. Language trends become more so widely used that they transform language and make that certain trend a standard. In social media there are definitely norms and trends that are unique to each site. Epiphany: Social media is a mode of communication and therefore seems to follow similar trends to language development. Chapter 9 Quote: Games, which allow learners to play, explore, and experience, also allow them to discover what is important to them, what it is they actually want to learn—and that keeps them playing. When people stop learning in a game, they lose interest and quit. When understood properly, therefore, games may in fact be one of the best models for learning and knowing in the twenty-first century. Why? Because if a game is good, you never play it the same way twice. Question: Why hasn't the educational system embraced this concept of games? Connection: Instead education has embraced a system where students are of course not able to play but they are also not allowed to do art, science, explore their creativity, or many other things that kids love to do. Reading, writing, and math are the only subjects that are encouraged and, in some cases, allowed. I worked at a school like this and my students would beg to do science. I am so excited to incorporate more games into my classroom. Fortunately I now work at a school where I have the freedom to do so. Epiphany: The quote above says, “When people stop learning in a game, they lose interest and quit.” I believe that this is a very valid reason why students lose interest in school and therefore stop trying to learn. Chapter 4
Quote: Unlike a classroom where the teacher controls the lecture, the organic communities that emerge through collectives produce meaningful learning because the inquiry that arises comes from the collective itself. Question: I wonder if this can be done with second graders. How would I start? Would I need to establish some rules in order to keep the learning flowing? Both teachers and students have been so “trained” to have one person in charge of the class. How difficult would it be to change that dynamic? Connection: My district has trained teachers and implemented effective questioning throughout. Learning form the collective reminds me of the dynamic that can come out of implementing effective questioning appropriately. When my students are very interested in what we are discussing they become very engaged in their discussions. The point of effective questioning is for the teacher to ask questions that will keep the conversation going and that will encourage more sharing from the students. Every time that someone answers the teacher’s question every student learns something new about the subject and thinks more thoroughly. This year my students truly enjoy this process and are always ready with something to say and eager to share it. Epiphany: This semester I have seen a glimpse of a collective arise on social media and our Weebly pages and I am truly impressed with what I have seen. I have tried to encourage collaboration and collectivism in my own classroom with the use of Schoology. I create discussion posts for them and they respond to a question or speak about a subject. I also have encouraged them to go on each other’s comments and reply to their classmates. They love to do this. I have some students who just read posts and like other people’s posts. They say that they are on Facebook. Chapter 5 Quote: The success of a blog depends on two things, neither of which is in the author’s control: reader comments and external links. Blogs that survive and thrive do so because they create a strong collective of users who build conversations around the author’s posts. Question: I wonder if it is difficult to have so little control over something that the author considers their own work. How does the author solicit new members to their collective and at the same time still feel that their blog is still their own. Connection: I have a friend who started a blog and she, very quickly, gained popularity. I am very impressed with the speed of her popularity. Her blog is fun to read and it is very honest. Her voice gives it a sense of “this could be anyone talking, even you”. Epiphany: During this class I have seen the potential for the development of a blog like it is described above. I wonder how long it would take a blog to reach popularity if it was fully promoted on social sites. Chapter 6 Quote: When a parent first tells a child not to touch a flame because it is hot, the child will almost always put out her hand and get burned. Why? Because the parent has given the child only a portion of the information she needed to make the decision—the explicit, cognitive part. He has shared only the knowledge he knew how to articulate: “Fire is hot.” But when a child gets burned, her body learns all kinds of things that cannot be conveyed by such a simple phrase: It hurts. It is unpleasant. What’s more, she learns not only to avoid the match that burned her but also to avoid things that look like the match that burned her, and she starts to make all kinds of connections to other things. That turns out to be the most important point. From that one experience, a finger touching a flame, a person learns countless things. Because our minds, bodies, and senses are always learning, we pick up Question: How difficult is it for a person to replace one type of tacit knowledge for another (for example, a positive for a negative one)? Connection: This passage makes me wonder how tacit knowledge plays a role in education, in a negative way. Especially when I read things online titled, “How to Kill a Learner’s Curiosity in 12 Easy Steps”. Students who go through school with an old culture of learning system in place learn tacit knowledge as a direct reaction to the way in which their classroom is being run. Just like the child who touches the flame, their “body learns all kinds of things that cannot be conveyed” by something verbal. Instead, their body learns from the uncomfortable reaction that they have to learning in such an environment and therefore they develop negative tacit knowledge. They learn the rules of school and learn not to be creative. They learn the rules of the game, school, on the tacit level. Epiphany: As adults, we have more control over how kids turn out than I ever considered. Kids develop tacit knowledge from life experiences. They learn from being around parents, teachers, and other adults, even those they see on television. These life experiences are the very experiences that develop their tacit knowledge. Chapters 1-3
Chapter 1 Quote:The new culture of learning actually comprises two elements. The first is a massive information network that provides almost unlimited access and resources to learn about anything. The second is a bounded and structured environment that allows for unlimited agency to build and experiment with things within those boundaries. The reason we have failed to embrace these notions is that neither one alone makes for effective learning. It is the combination of the two, and the interplay between them, that makes the new culture of learning so powerful. Question: What classroom example can be used to explain the information network and the bounded and structured environment working together?Connection: One thing that this quote and chapter reminded me of was Tony Wagner’s statement that in this era of informational surplus there is no need to memorize everything anymore. An individual has access to a surplus information. It is not what you know anymore it is what you do with it that matters. Epiphany:This quote combines what we have been learning this semester. Information as we have traditionally delivered it to students cannot exist on its own. We have been force feeding our students information without making that information relevant to them or allowing them to do, literally, do something with it. Chapter 2 Quote:One of the basic principles of this kind of cultivation (speaking of a culture that a scientist would grow in a petri dish under controlled conditions) is that you don’t interfere with the process, because it is the process itself that is interesting. In fact, the entire point of the experiment is to allow the culture to reproduce in an uninhibited, completely organic way, within the constraints of medium and environment - and then see what happens. Question: How do you know when you are allowing the culture to develop and when you are wasting your students’ time as well as your own? Connection:I have experimented on my students using this concept of allowing thier thinking to brew and learning to take place. It truly is powerful. But it also takes a while to train your students and come to a point where you feel that you accomplished what you set out to accomplish. Sometimes your plans do not turn out and that is okay also. As long as learning took place. Epiphany:I have alway struggled, as a teacher, with giving not my students too many rules, guidelines, or my own examples. I have learned throughout the years that students will try to copy any examples that they are given. They have been taught that the teacher knows you were listening and paying attention because you do a good job on the independent task. So they try to copy any examples that the teacher provides in order to prove that they are good students. Now, I plan to offer less examples of what I desire as an end result. I would like to set up boundaries for the environment and a medium for them to use and watch the magic happen. Chapter 3 Quote: Today, however, children and adults alike must continue to deal with an ever-changing, expanding world, A child playing with a new toy and an adult logging onto the Internet, for example, both wonder, “What do I do now? how do I handle this new situation, process this new information, and make sense of this new world?” Question:Why and how has education steered so far away from this notion of learning through play? Connection:We were coming to a point where play was completely frowned upon. Teachers are only “allowed” to teach skills and facts. Art and play have no room in the classroom. Before working at my current school I worked at a reading first school. It was year four program improvement. All we were “allowed” to teach was reading until lunch, math for 1.5 hours, and ELD time. No science, no art, and no creativity was allowed. I was having my students draw and label in order to help them learn the vocabulary of the story. The reading coach came in and scolded me. She said, “Be careful how much art you are letting them do. These kids need to be reading and writing. They are very low.” I knew very quickly that this was not the assignment for me. I would love to infuse every lesson with play and imagination as much as possible. Epiphany:Human nature is to play with something which is new until it is not new anymore. Knowing this now I plan to change the play element of each concept or lesson when my students thing they have something mastered. This will refresh the concept and make it new and exciting again and thus giving them the opportunity to learn it even better (Tacit knowledge?) For this final reflection on Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap I am supposed to come up with my own 7 essential survival skills for the 21st Century or a combination of Tony’s and mine. I choose to do the latter. I really like tony Wagner’s 7 survival skills. I added to some of them to better follow what is important to me.
1. Critical thinking and quick problem solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence and example. -Collaboration across networks can mean a lot of things. It can be that my students can Skype with students who are far away. It can mean that they collaborate with other classes within my grade level or in other grade levels within our school. Or it can mean………
If we are preparing our students to compete with others on a global scale they have to be agile and adaptable. Today’s competitors adapt to social situations which they are not familiar with. They adapt economically. An example of this is the trend to live “off the grid”. People are developing ways in which to live with a very minimal out of pocket expense. Being frugal is applauded and decreasing your carbon footprint is a way in which people have opened doors to economic freedom and economical adaptability. Cultural adaptability is an essential skill that global competitors must possess if they are to be exposed to a variety of cultures. Verbal agility and adaptability- the ability to speak the language that you need to speak at the right moment, and being able to recognize that moment as soon as possible. Time- Using your time effectively and being able to adapt to others and their sense of urgency when you need to.
5. Effective oral and written communication in at least two languages- A second language is essential to being a global competitor. Some of the candidates that our students are competing with speak at least two languages.
6. Accessing and analyzing information - I don’t have anything further to add to Wagner’s definition. 7. Curiosity and Imagination- I don’t have anything further to add to Wagner’s definition. 8. Empathy, politeness, sensitivity towards others- Our society is very ethnocentric. Most of our citizens only speak one language and when we travel we expect others to speak English. We tend to be so happy with our own society that we are unwilling to be sensitive towards other societies. We think that we are isolated and protected from the rest of the world’s problems. Each generation tends to be less polite. This lack of politeness can be seen in how we treat others, even those closest to us.
What can I commit to in my own classroom for this school year? I am fully committed to Empathy, politeness, sensitivity towards others. I always try to take every learning opportunity and talking it out with my class. We come up with alternatives for undesirable behavior. I believe that my students can leave second grade practicing these skills. Effective oral and written communication in at least two languages.This year I implemented a new writing strategy that is yielding excellent results. I am so excited to keep this going. I will use the same strategies and teach my student how to use them with speaking. Leading by influence and example- I have already started doing this. I plan to do this a lot more. I would like to bring in examples of real people who do this and learn from speaking with them. Chapter 3 High stakes testing have been the norm since the start of NCLB. Students are expected to pass tests in order to prove their mastery of a subject. Often teachers and schools as a whole have felt the need to teach their students in order for them to do well on the tests as these tests have been used to judge, rank, and even punish schools based on their test scores. This history has yielded students who are lacking in artistic, critical thinking, and problem solving talents. As they graduate from high school they are unfit for college and for life. What we have been doing throughout the years is not working. I believe that it has been an overwhelming factor in our lack of global competitiveness. Our students lack the skills to not only join our country's workforce but also to compete for jobs against graduates from other countries. In chapter 3 Tony Wagner includes a long standing definition of rigor as mastery of more and more complex academic content... more homework... more math problems... He explains that memorizing facts was needed in a time of limited information. But that now in an era of influx and information we simply look things up. Memorizing facts isn't as essential as it used to be. Wagner redefines rigor as follows: The rigor that matters most for he twenty-fist century is demonstrated mastery of the core competencies for work, citizenship, and life-long learning. Studying academic content is the means of developing competencies, instead of being the goal, as it has been traditionally. In today's world, it's no longer how much you know that matters; it's what you can do with what you know (p. 111). Don't think that this means that you shouldn't memorize anything at all. There is some information that everyone should have as a base for doing something with what you know. Wagner also addresses the lack of will in today's youth. Young people seem to want to be constantly entertained and for things to come easy to them. If things are not fun enough or if they get too difficult they give up. Wagner offers this as an explanation for the high drop out rates in our country. "In a national survey of nearly 500 dropouts from around the country, about half of these young people said they left school because their classes were boring and not relevant to their lives or career aspirations. A majority also said that schools did not motivate them to work hard" (p. 114). It all seems a bit confusing. How can kids complain about being bored at school and also complain that they are not being challenged enough? Although Common Core aspires to address some of the current shortfalls of education I do not believe that implemented exactly as they are written will solve our problems. There IS a need for learning skills in the traditional boring way. Students cannot just wake up one day and be critical thinkers without a baseline to support their thinking. We will see how all of this plays out. Chapter 4 In this chapter Wagner suggests that if we want to change our country's educational system we should look to teachers to change the way that teaching and learning have traditionally been approached. He supports this statement by explaining that teachers are ill prepared for their jobs. He offers his experience as a teacher in training in order to further support his statement. Wagner offers a very detailed and real description of his days as a teacher in training and throughout his career. Reading his story takes me back to a place of uncomfortable insecurity. I never fully understood what my first master teacher wanted me to learn from her. She offered few opportunities for learning and fewer opportunities for practicing. My second placement was a lot more structured but when I was done I had more questions than answers. I was a teacher. But, I didn't feel any different than when I was a student. I felt so insecure about my abilities to lead a class full of students to success. But there I went in search for a job. I remember my first day on the job. I was given my key, shown my room, and lead to it. Then came evaluation time. My principal offered no help or support. He had more questions for me about what exactly I was saying (since he didn't speak Spanish) and no feedback about what I was doing well or what I could improve on. The only thing that he wrote on my evaluation that I could do differently was that I should continue to work on classroom management and that my room seemed a bit cluttered. I suspect that he was referring to all of the information I had on my walls for my students to refer to . When I asked him about what I could do in order to help clutter he offered no advise. He simply told me to ask someone else. I felt so lost all year. Wagner continues on to describe important jobs in his career which motivated him to write this book. He ends this chapter with a very important question "How do we motivate today's students and tomorrow's workers to want to work hard and to achieve excellence? (p. 166)" I wish I, we, had the answers to this question. I do not believe that there is just one thing that can be done in order to motivate today's students and tomorrow's workers to want to work hard. I don't believe that teachers or schools can do it alone. We need more than educational reform. We need a reform of our society in general. The educational system cannot be held responsible for all of the problems of society. I, as a teacher am not willing too take all of the responsibility on my shoulders. There are things that essential for students to be successful and they are not all found in books or computers. Some have to be hardwired into them. Unfortunately there are things that are hardwired into our students but they are not all skills needed in order to be successful. Some are quite the opposite of that. What can and will we do to rewire our students? It really does take a village. What will the family do? What will teachers do? What will our society do? in order to ensure that the future for our youth is not limited? In order to make sure that our youth can be competitive in the world's job market? This video about Caine really moved me. I didn't know whether to cry, laugh, or cheer. I remember being about that age and making things out of "trash". I made a ring out of the plugs that come on bottles when you first open them. I remember dropping this ring on a ferris wheel and I made the conductor go in and retrieve it for me. I still remember the look on his face when he found it and gave it back to me. I could read his mind, "You asked me to retrieve this piece of trash?" One time I made a hat out of paper. My dad refused to go back to get it when it blew out the car window. I cried. I couldn't understand why he wouldn't go back and retrieve my prized procession. I get it now, these things only had value to me as Caine's arcade did to him, until Nirvan stopped by. When Nirvan came in he saw the value in those cardboard boxes that Caine called an arcade. He saw that Caine was a genius. He transformed Caine's life with the power of the internet and specifically social media. A flash mob? WOW! He got a mob alright. Not only did they make Caine's day but his life. One person and one posting can really make a difference. Dr. Jeff Heil has been "pushing" social media on us. He are learning about sharing EVERYTHING or at least something, reaching more audiences, and getting our "face" out there. Caine's Arcade, the video, shows us how powerful this newfound tool can be. If you share it they will come. Caine's story has now been seen by 41/2 million people and has inspired others to make something out of nothing. I plan on showing my students this video and hopefully the next step is that they will want to do what Caine did with "trash". If you would like to know more about Caine and his movement or about the Global Cardboard Challenge, which I plan on becoming a part of, you can go to the website for Caine's Arcade at http://cainesarcade.com |
CategoriesRaquel RudderI am a student of technology. Archives
December 2014
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