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?) |
CategoriesRaquel RudderI am a student of technology. Archives
December 2014
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