Archive for the ‘Teaching Ideas’ Category

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Follow-Up to “Education Needs Better Tools”

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

My last post – “Education Needs Better Tools” – instigated several conversations this week, and each time I elaborated on what I meant, I just couldn’t quite nail it down.

And then I came across a picture that Christopher D. Sessums (a brilliant educational blogger) used in his most recent post … and it communicated in such a better and more simple way what I was trying to say.

tools make change

tools make change

Granted he refered to the toast and toaster differently …

  • Sessums: “Toaster = Teachers” and “Toast = Students”
  • Me: “Toast = Educational Learning Resources [or tools]” and “Toaster = State of Education” …

The picture and his opening McLuhan quote nonetheless helped me capture what I’m trying to communicate:

Change is more likely to occur when we invent new tools that make participating (in the change) fun and easy and worth it.

I’m not saying that theories and philosophies are useless. Far from it. Everything starts with an idea, and we have the great thinkers of the ages to thank for laying the groundwork for most of our advancements. But what I am saying is that, given how much tools accelerate and make change, I think Education would hugely benefit if more ephasis was placed building tools to make the change happen … instead of talking about the change that should be happening.

Some Final Thoughts:

  • It wasn’t the idea of looking for better land and game that spawned human expansion across the world as much as it was clothes and arrow-heads and fire-starting techniques.
  • It wasn’t Martin Luther that fueled the Reformation as much as it was the printing press and the use of a common linguistical tool … German.
  • It wasn’t the idea of settling the West that settled the West as much as it was the steam engine and the locomotive.
  • And it wasn’t the computer that got all of us using the internet in the 1990’s as much as it was the web browsers that made it so fun and easy.

If we want educational change, we need to think about changing our educational tools.

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Posted in Philosophy, Reflections, Teaching Ideas | No Comments »

Education Needs Better Tools

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Education doesn’t need any more theories.

Education doesn’t need any more assessment methods.

Education doesn’t need any more fanciness.

Education needs better tools.

Education needs more action.

It’s been almost 100 years since John Dewey sparked the pedagogical revolution … and how far have we come?

We reward theories, assessments, and fancy ways to display information. We don’t reward educational tools that bring the real-world into the classroom for students and teachers; tools that make educational potent … that make it fun, exciting, and meaningful.

Would a military general ask his soldiers to invent and build their own weapons? Of course not! Yet we ask our teachers (the ones in the educational trenches day-in and day-out) to do this every day.

We need our experts to talk less, to theorize less, and to assess less. We need our experts to build things, to create cutting-edge learning programs instead of talking about what they would be like!  Whether they be games, investigative scenarios, simulations, life-like competitions, role plays, productions, or what have you … we just need less talk about how to change things, and more action.

With reference to the Monty Pythons, we need less PFJ … and more feminists!

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Posted in Reflections, Teaching Ideas | 2 Comments »

Why Don’t Students Get It?

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Often I’ll hear frustrated teachers say something like:

“I’ve explained it to them a hundred different ways – that they won’t get a good grade if they don’t do the work – but they don’t listen. They won’t work. They just don’t get it!  Why? Why? Why won’t they do the work? It drives me crazy!”

This is understandable. I think one of the most difficult things many teachers face is having to work with a clientele that doesn’t necessarily want to work with them. Police officers too. It’s not fun when people don’t want you around. It’s frustrating.

But what’s always bothered me about the “Why don’t they get it?” comment is the massive assumption on the teacher’s part. What is the “IT” that some kids don’t get? Clearly the teacher gets “it” … right?

Often not. It’s been my experience that most of the well-intentioned educators who regularly ask, “Why don’t they get it? Why won’t they do their work?” are also the ones who fail to realize that – to their students – it’s not about the grades. They fail to step back and ask themselves questions like:

  • “Why is this worth learning, really?”
  • “Why should my students work at this?”
  • “How is this relevant to their lives? To their worlds”
  • “Why did the curriculum experts find this important enough to make me teach it?”
  • “How can I get all these things across to them?”

And that’s the key word: across. There’s a chasm there that needs crossing. You get “it.” In this case, some of your students don’t. If they did get it, you wouldn’t be complaining. And the best teachers are able to move these insights about “it” across the gap of understanding. They make learning relevant. They make it meaningful. That’s why they’re good teachers.

So if you ever find yourself asking, “Why don’t they get it?”

  1. Step back. Acknowledge that for some of your students grades – on their own – just aren’t motivating.
  2. Imagine you’re them. Like really try to imagine what makes them tick. What’s their language?
  3. Ask yourself,“What’s the ‘it’ that I want my students (or employees even) to be getting?” Define it.
  4. Then come up with 5 good reasons why they should “get it.” Why it should matter to them.
  5. Then try and come up with a couple of ways to communicate this to them.
  6. In a language they understand.

At the very least you’ll be showing them that you care; that you’re trying to reach them; that you’re trying to teach to them. That’s why teachers exist, isn’t it?

And although this alone can often be enough to spark interest and motivate … maybe, just maybe, you’ll help them get “it” too.

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If Technology is Not Adding Value, It’s a Gimmick

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

I recently stumbled upon Mr. Thielmann’s blog this morning – a high school social studies teacher in Prince George, BC – and wanted to reply to the great questions he asked in his “Digital Story Telling” post. In it he asks:

“How is technology helping or hurting in the demonstration of learning? How can we build on this?”

My answer is simple: If it’s not adding value, it’s a gimmick.

We’re one of the few animals on earth who can readily create tools and devices to help us meet our needs. Sure chimps can use twigs to get into ant hills (and even use spears), sure ravens perform all sorts of intelligent tricks to get what they want, and on an on … But we are the only animal that can manipulate our environment – at will – to help us satisfy our needs. And that’s the true value of technology, in my opinion.

So with reference to Thielmann’s question about technology hurting or helping learning, I think we educators need to be thinking asking this question:

“Is this technology adding educational value, or is it just a gimmick?”

If our desired outcome is quality learning – like really meaningful learning – then we need to be looking for technologies that make this happen better and easier. And the worst thing we can do is waste our students’ time in learning new technologies without having educational goals in the first place. If that’s what we’re doing, then technology is a gimmick. We’re not adding value. We’re hurting learning.

Let me explain by sharing one of my own experiences.

How I Hurt Learning with Technology ~

A couple years ago I heard about blogs. “Cool,” I thought, “I’m gonna use these next week.” The day came and I spent 30 minutes of time walking students down to the computer lab, booting up computers, and guiding everyone through the process of creating Blogger accounts. Then – after 30 minutes of set-up time – I asked them to respond to a question on their blogs. Why did this hurt learning? Because – at that time and for that group of students – I had NO intention of treating the blog responses any differently than paper/pen paragraph responses. My intention was this: They write it. I check it. I record mark. Done.

Pen/paper technology would have sufficed for this one-time writing assignment, and I would’ve saved 30 minutes of class time. Instead, because I wasn’t ready to commit to regular blog use, I could have better used the 30 minutes for silent pen/paper writing in class. Then we could have used the remaining time for meaningful, face-to-face discussions about everyone’s responses to the prompt … really fleshing out our ideas and learning from one another.

How Technology Could have Helped Learning ~

I’m not saying blogs are bad. I’m saying that when we use technology it MUST be used to add value to our learning goals. It has to fit.  It has to add value.

So what should I have done if I wanted to help my students’ learning with blogs? Easy.

  1. First commit myself to using them frequently with that group of students, making the 30 minutes of set-up time an investment rather than a waste of time,
  2. Incorporate the blogging comments feature into that assignment by shortening the length of my students’ initial response and replacing it with a component that asked them to compose 2-4 meaningful comments on their classmates’ posts,
  3. Lead by example by commenting myself, showing my students that I care enough about what they’re writing to do it myself,
  4. Display and discuss what was posted online with my students the next class. This is the most important because it validates the whole process and takes advantage of the fact that everyone’s comments can be viewed online, in an instant.

In sum, we can’t expect technology to improve learning if we just use it. It must add value. This means we need to re-think the form and function of our technology-related activities and assignments because, at the end of the day, if it’s not making learning better and easier, then it’s not technology. It’s a distraction.

Posted in Teaching Ideas | 3 Comments »

Practicing Innovative Instruction

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

I read another educator’s great blog post about failure and risk taking in the teaching and learning process. You should read it, it was great. But one sentence in the post really caught my attention, and that was this sentence:

I, for one, am tired of reading about innovative instruction and not practicing it. It seems that many of these philosophies of curriculum and instruction exist only on paper written by academics who publish in journals that often go unread by the classroom instructors.

The best use of learning – in my opinion – is putting what’s learned into constructive action. This makes it real. It makes it tangible. It makes it meaningful. And this includes the learning about teaching and learning.

If all of us educators did what the quote above suggests on a regular basis – if we tried out just half of the new teaching ideas and practices we stumbled upon because we looked forward to learning from what didn’t work as much as from what did work – not only would we be modeling the best kind of learning to our students, but I think we would become much better teachers … much more quickly.

Posted in Teaching Ideas, Wisdom | 1 Comment »

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