Note: Although this post is tailored to BC educators, anyone interested in integrating The Civic Mirror into their course can learn from it.
I’ve been asked this question so many times, I thought I would share my answer with everyone:
“Can you tell me specific strategies that you have used to make The Civic Mirror applicable to BC’s Social Studies 11 course? “
Yes! And let me answer this question by describing how I tailored my course delivery with the program. (more…)
It’s really amazing when you discover that there’s a group of people working on something that so entirely matches what you believe in that – if you were to embark on the same task they were working on – you would want to do it just like them.
When you’re pushing the status quo, this doesn’t happen that often. But when it does, it’s worth broadcasting. This week, after reading one Boing Boing article, I discovered two such groups:
1. Quest to Learn is a new school scheduled to open this coming fall in New York City, founded on the principles of authentic, student-centered, game-based, and real-world learning models. Taken from their homepage …
Quest fosters the type of learning that is possible today—learning based on access to online resources and tools from around the globe, learning that supports customized content for every student on demand, learning that is game-like in its ability to inspire and motivate.
Quest’s principal founder, Aaron Schwartz, is a New York City educator who understands the value in modeling education to reflect real world systems, instead of modeling education to describe real world systems.
2. As a young teacher I would often peek outside my classroom to see if anyone was coming down the hallways before I began a game, role play, or simulation with my students. I thought I was breaking the rules. I didn’t want to be judged. Had I known that there was an Institute of Play whose primary mission is to promote “the play, analysis, and creation of games, as a foundation for learning, innovation, and change in the 21st century,” I maybe wouldn’t have felt so guilty. Kudos to this team of professionals for working on such a worthy cause, and I hope their work helps other young educators to feel proud – not ashamed – of using game-based learning resources with their students.
This weekend I attended the Teaching and Learning Conference in Baltimore, MD (put on by the American Political Science Association). Although I was there exhibiting The Civic Mirror, I also had the extreme priviledge of sitting in on the “Simulations and Role Plays” track which consisted of a group of 20+ political scientists who discussed that very topic – as it pertains to the teaching and learning of political science – all weekend long. Here were some of the outstanding thoughts and ideas coming out of the track:
How Much Should the Educator Guide the Simulated Experience?
Professor William Cunion, from Mount Union College, opened the track by posing the question every experiential educator faces: “How much should I guide and focus the student-led learning experience?” In his paper he discusses this dilema where, on the one hand, 1) Focusing student attention on targeted learning objectives runs the risk of preventing other, unexpected kinds of learning from occuring, but, on the other hand, 2) Not focusing attention on intended learning objectives runs the risk of having fewer students obtain the targeted learning objectives. A great question, and one I think every experiential educator needs to keep in mind [To read Dr. Cunion’s paper, which explains what I’m trying to summarize 100-times better, click this link, then click the “browse” button on the left, then select the “Simulations” track, and then go to page 2].
Civil War Simulation
Professor Rex Brynen, from McGill University, created and runs a peace-keeping simulation called Brynania in his political science course every year. Talk about making education meaningful! This simulation generates over 10,000 emails in a week; his100 seat peace-keeping course fills up within 7 minutes after online course registration opens (at midnight, no less), and for the week that the simulation runs, his students spend – on average – 12 hours a day working on it. McGill anyone?
EuroSim
Asst. Professor Rebecca Jones, from Widener University, runs EuroSim with her students every year, a simulation of the governing process of the European Union. What was equally interesting was her recently published paper (in the Journal of Political Science Education) which discusses and references research that validates how experiential learning activities (like simulations) can dramatically improve student learning in the following ways:
Fantasy Congress
Professor Jennifer Hora, from Valparaiso University, discussed a Fantasy Congress simulation that she ran in her 300-level Congress course. The idea is that students research and draft U.S. Congresspersons in hopes that they will score lots of points by drafting and passing legistlation, participating in committee reports, etc. in the real and live U.S. Congress. It’s like fantasy sports … but the sport is the legislation and the athletes are politicians. Just listening to Jennifer talk about her students’ excitement and enthusiasm about congressional current events was enough to sell me. What a great example of making education meaningful for students!
What if we had headsets, or implants, that allowed us to access anything off the internet in less than a second of desiring that information? What use would a teacher be? What would we need schools for?
Last summer (and for the life of me I can’t find the link) I was reading a Fast Company or Fortune magazine article that interviewed Lary Page, one of the Google founders. Page was talking about his (and Google’s) 20-40 year vision of creating search implants that would interact with our minds to help us access whatever information we wanted within minutes (related links here, here, and here).
Granted I don’t think any of us will be around to read the brain implant headlines (if anyone will be); however, this idea does illustrate just how immediately accessible information will be in the coming years?
And yes, information already is instantly available … but the effort we will need to expend to find what we need will decrease and decrease.
So what implications does this have on how we should design our learning environments? What changes are we noticing already?
Think of all the students who don’t get why they have to memorize maps and plot directions when they can just do instant, online map searches.
Think of the stories you’ve read about professors scrambling for a missing fact in lectures and their students finding it quicker than they could with their smart phones.
Think of spreadsheets and calculators and statistical software programs that pump out desired calculations in seconds.
In sum, technology (i.e. the internet) will continue to replace many of the mental steps we need to do to complete a complex task, but it won’t, in my opinion, replace the high level thinking that’s needed to guide learning and discovery needed to complete it. Technology won’t replace what’s needed to make valuable connections between here and there, between what we have and what need to discover, and between what’s important and what’s unimportant.
That “what’s needed” is wisdom and insight.
And this is where the educator will become more and more important as we venture deeper and deeper into the Information Age. If everything’s searchable within seconds, quality educators will be needed to help us answer questions like these:
How do we make sense of all this data?
What can you really do with this map technology?
Why do we need to use that math formula? What will it allow us to do?
What should we be searching for? How do we know if it’s quality?
More than ever, the real value of educators will be in their ability to stay ahead of the curve and pass on their insights with their students. For some time we’ve been told that “Life-Long Learners” will be the ones who will succeed in the Information Age … and now we’re starting to see living proof of this. The best educators, then, will be the best examples of life-long learning – they will be the ones who will have the most to share, the most insights gained, and the most acquired wisdom.
Technology won’t replace educators or lessen their importance. Instead, technology will demand that they constantly learn, really teach … and disseminate less.
