Monday's Class 7/21

Response to video #1 - corporate leaders:

I love thinking about what the classroom could look like. Our schema for this is so narrow as the classroom hasn’t really changed since the industrial revolution. The idea of becoming a community of learners versus a classroom of learners is awesome! There is so much our students are missing out on by only relying on their 25-30 classmates and one teacher. It’s quite limiting. It's exciting to think about!

Response to video #2 - Sir Ken Robinson:

My notes:

Life is not linear - life is organic

We are obsessed with getting people to college

College starts in kindergarten - no it doesn't

We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education - everything is standardized 

People are dropping out of education because we are not feeding their passion

Children's dreams are around us everyday. We need to tread lightly

What a wise, articulate man. He challenges us to think about many of the things we get caught up in. The college comments are interesting as we are so hyper focused on this notion. I agree that we are obsessed with getting kids to college and the statistics about kids finishing college are staggering, so it makes me wonder what the end goal really is. I disagree that college doesn't start in kindergarten. The moment we capture these little hearts and minds is the moment we start instilling in them the love of learning and reaching out into the world to find their dreams, passion and potential. For many of our kids, college is a word they have never heard in their homes. It is our job to begin teaching them what the choices are. College being one of them. I do agree with him on the crazy notion of a 3 year old having a resume. I was blown away by this as I headed into the preschool world for my own son 15 years ago. I had no idea what a rat race this was. 

Response to video #3 - Sugata Mitra:

My notes:

Good teachers do not want to teach in places they don't want to 

Groups of children can learn to use a computer (hole in the wall experiment)

One computer in a village - after 14 days, kids were downloading and making their own music

If children have interest, then education happens

If there's stuff on google, why would you need to stuff it in your head?

It's the discussion that creates the photographic memory - a child in front of one computer would not get the same results. 

Granny cloud 

The implications of his study are mind blowing and the type of out of the box thinking many of us don't want to do. If this is true, do we need the complicated systems of education we still have today? So many teachers, specialists, programs, initiatives, etc... Are we spending money the right way? 

He brings up the collaboration of children and the utmost importance of this. In a heavy teacher talk system, children often don't communicate on a level they should. We know the research around English Language Development and oral fluency and visuals in learning and yet the majority of our classrooms are dominated by teacher talk and auditory learning. If we think about Blooms or any of the models of higher learning, collaborating and teaching to someone else are way up there. If students were given more time to talk to each other and teachers became more of a 'granny cloud', what might happen? Teacher talk versus student talk is a part of our school improvement plan. We have two strategies implemented. The first is the research around the age of the child being the approximate time they can attend to learning. If you have a room full of 8 and 9 year olds, you need to get the teaching across in that period of time before switching gears to some type of activity. Another strategy is the 10:2 idea. 10 minutes of input and then 2 minutes of output. For younger kids, the ratio can be adapted. Both strategies halt a teacher from hogging the air space for too long and create intentional lesson planning for more oral, visual and active learning.