Miscellaneous Musings

I recently attended a workshop presented by Jamie McKenzie entitled "Beyond Cut and Paste." It was all about authentic learning and encouraging original thinking. If you are not familiar with him, his FNO website is a course in itself. Take a look and find all sorts of learning activities that you can adapt to any subject area. He also employs many of the web 2.0 applications that we have learned about in MILI and I was able to share a few with him that he had not heard of.
Everything we did during the workshop was hands on and constructivist, which has also been our experience in MILI. He really empasizes synthesis and deep learning experiences which is what we know education should be. This workshop experience, my perusal of an article on technology in education, my experiences in MILI and my need to start thinking about a June Tech Academy session of project-based learning , prompted the following reflection this morning over coffee:

Project based learning; problem based learning; authentic assignments…are not new ideas.
I began teaching in the early 70”s and the key word at the time was relevance. That sounds a lot like authentic to me. I recall trying to implement some of this relevance in my American History classes by defending a student’s right to put the flag at half mast during a fire drill in remembrance of the students killed at Kent State only a week earlier. [I was teaching in a school in the greater Cleveland area, only 45 minutes from Kent State.] Within an hour I was in the principal’s office answering queries from the principal, asst. principal, and my dept. head of why I had veered from the mandated history curriculum. I noted that this was history in the making and kids had questions and that all I had done was defend a student’s right of free speech and his right to not be attacked by others when he was not there to defend himself. In other words, I was being called on the carpet for being relevant.
Today teachers are being pushed toward relevance, authenticity, problem-based learning and we have the tools and resources at hand. In Minneapolis we are being coached in disciplinary literacy where students are “apprentices” in their particular fields of science, history, writing, art, etc. So why aren’t we all jumping in there and getting our feet wet. [MILI participants excepted] We don’t have to worry about trouble with the administration for being “out there.” Have we become complacent? Is it easier, more comfortable to stick with OUR content, OUR way of doing things, OUR providing the answers instead of teaching students how to question, question, question?
I think most teachers really want to be authentic and relevant and can see the authenticity and relevance of their discipline, but what is really difficult about this type of teaching and learning is that it is complex and time consuming. That is difficult medicine to push in a culture that has often preferred simple answers [just the facts, Ma’m] and quick results. There are none! We need to remember that and we need to help kids work within an environment where there are more questions than answers, where the process of solving a problem is as valuable sometimes as the solution itself. Where we have to help students to be self aware, mindful and able to see how their lives and their living fit into the larger picture. Maybe all we need to stop and do that too. Maybe we all need some practice in using all our senses….the mind being one of them.
We give kids lots to look at, lots to read, lots to listen to, lots to touch, smell, taste. But how do we teach them to synthesize all this information? How do we help them learn to see, comprehend, truly hear, etc? How do we teach them how to construct their own knowledge and understanding? Is it easier just to feed them ours? To give them “talk radio” education? Cut and paste education? Just listen and take notes education?
Enter technology….
Becky Firth, director of the Anacortes, Washington Technology Leadership Center feels that technology presence may be growing in schools, but many educators fail to conceptualize it as a constructivist tool—as a means to inject more project-based teaching methods into the classroom. [Classroom Technology Integration: Having technology is one thing—maximizing the investment is another. Zach Miners. District Administration Magazine, April 2009.
Thank goddess for MILI and all the great resources we are learning to use with students and colleagues. My tool of choice at the moment is screentoaster. I finally got two podcasts up on our wiki for media specialists and techs with directions for equipment inventory. Not too exciting content wise but efficient and more accessible than screen shots.