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May
24
2012
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In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists
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How our children learn is critical today, not so much as a point of pedagogy, but for the development of a distinct and most important skill – learning
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May
22
2012
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Mark Elliott writes about stigmergic collaboration and the evolution of group work
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Pierre-Paul Grasse first coined the term stigmergy in the 1950s in conjunction with his research on termites. Grasse showed that a particular configuration of a termite’s environment (as in the case of building and maintaining a nest) triggered a response in a termite to modify its environment, with the resulting modification in turn stimulating the response of the original or a second worker to further transform its environment. Thus the regulation and coordination of the building and maintaining of a nest was dependent upon stimulation provided by the nest, as opposed to an inherent knowledge of nest building on the individual termite’s part. A highly complex nest simply self-organises due to the collective input of large numbers of individual termites performing extraordinarily simple actions in response to their local environment.
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Oct
12
2011
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In the past, children may not have liked School, but they were persuaded to believe that it was the passport to success in life. To the extent that children reject School as out of touch with contemporary life, they become active agents in creating pressure for change. Like any other social structure, School needs to be accepted by its participants. It will not survive very long beyond the time when children can no longer be persuaded to accord it a degree of legitimation.
Sep
28
2011
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learning is action-oriented and gets its feedback not from the yes-no of adult authority but from the resistance and the guidance of reality. Some attempted actions do not produce the expected results. Some produce sur- prising results. The child comes to learn that it is not sufficient to want a result for it to happen. One must act in an appropriate way, and “appropriate” means based on understanding
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Children learn to think in quantities because they live in a world so constructed that quantities are important. But then what can we do to improve the way in which the world facilitates learning?
Sep
10
2011
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To experience something has a far more profound effect on your ability to remember and influence you than if you simply read it in a book
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You’ve cast a learner into the world. And that’s the most powerful thing you can do as a teacher
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a totally different way of thinking about “teaching” one where “instead of controlling a classroom, a teacher now influences or shapes a network.”
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apprenticeship for every student in our classrooms these days is not so much grounded in a trade or a profession as much as it is grounded in the process of becoming a learner
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seeing the purpose of higher education as going beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills
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Only this will provide flexibility in applying knowledge, skills, and understanding that will suffice at a time of rapid change and ‘super-complexity’ in dealing with emerging issues and new problems.
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Aug
22
2011
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“How do we create a culture of learners that thrive in the 21st century?”
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- How might I alter this assignment or project so that it “Responds” to the learner? How can the experience “Talk Back?”
- How might I plant barriers within the assignment that force learners to “Question” their way through — to value the “questions” not just for “answers?”
- How can I ban silence in my classroom, provoking “Conversation” with my assignments and projects, expecting learners to exchange ideas and knowledge?
- How can I make their learning worth “Investing” in? How might the outcomes of their learning be of value to themselves and to others?
- How am I daring my students to make the “Mistakes” that feed the learning dialog?
Classroom Teachers:
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agility involves letting learners manage, direct and adapt their learning with minimum constraint
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the Hole-in-the-Wall model gives us a glimpse of how robust learning can be an emergent property of small groups, with no teacher input. It also challenges the idea that learning-to-learn skills and a grounding in metacognition are a pre-requisite for organising your own learning
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Aug
21
2011
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- ‘Is a broken down car parked?’
- ‘If you read a newspaper in the newsagents without paying for it, is it stealing?’
- ‘Do all polo’s taste the same?’
- ‘Can you be proud of someone you have never met?’
- ‘Is a hole a thing?’
“ ‘Thunks’ are deceptively tricky little questions that ‘make your brain go ouch!’ “
Ian's examples of ‘Thunks’ include:
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Active Learning-I ask students to use their prior experiences (interests, hobbies, coursework) in a service learning project for my class, using what they know, and connections they have been able to make, to benefit others. They propose their own projects.
This idea has all 5 components:
a. Incorporating peer feedback into a course.
b. By giving students the opportunity to learn how to give feedback to classmates’ works-in-progress, this motivates students to perform at the same or higher level or their peers in a non-threatening way.
c. It is also an activity which reinforces learning of the subject matter (active & challenging).
d. t can create a sense of support and community because the students are helping each other improve their own works (and grades!)
e. And peer feedback allows students to gain an appreciation for classmates’ efforts and a glimpse of the instructor or professor’s role. -
When students are stressed by the lesson, find a way to show how you (the teacher) messed up learning the topic
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the selection and use of technologies for teaching and learning is driven as much by context and values and beliefs as by hard scientific evidence or rigorous theory
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There are deep philosophical, technical and pragmatic challenges in trying to provide a model or set of models flexible but practical enough to handle the huge range of factors involved
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Aug
16
2011
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I truly believe that a combination of actively influencing a story line in combination with a reaction upon the decisions taken would make learners feel more appreciated or valued if you will and encourage them to continue learning with that program instead of only getting negative feedback in from of a summary assessment when a chapter or course is finished
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According to Rita Kop PLE is a UK term and PLN an American term. Dave Cormier questions whether the term personal should be used at all. Stephen Downes points out that personal is an OK term if you think about [Personal Learning] Network as opposed to [Personal] Learning Network – and similarly for PLE
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the words are not as important as the process
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a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is more concerned with tools and technology and that Personal Learning Networks (PLN) are more concerned with connections to people
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The PLE takes me to my PLN through various gates and paths
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“Pundits may be asking if the Internet is bad for our children’s mental development, but the better question is whether the form of learning and knowledge-making we are instilling in our children is useful to their future.”
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we can’t keep preparing students for a world that doesn’t exist
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Blended learning lets designers split off prerequisite material from the rest of a course
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Blended learning lets instructional designers separate rote content focusing on lower-order thinking skills, which can be easily taught online, from critical thinking skills, which many instructors feel more comfortable addressing in the classroom
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We cannot have it both ways: quality of thinking and speed are anathema to each other.
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Covering content is daunting enough, but providing the time necessary to indulge in the quality conversations that make learning truly engaging is almost impossible
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Good practice in undergraduate education:
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We address the teacher's how, not the subject-matter what, of good practice in undergraduate education. We recognize that content and pedagogy interact in complex ways.
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tell real stories from your own life in a way that is relevant and engaging to your audience. If more people could just remember that great speeches or presentations leverage the power of the speaker's own stories
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we must not talk ourselves out of being who we really are
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