I am going through my iPhoto library, sifting out redundant or otherwise useless pictures. I frequently pull out my camera during keynotes and other presentations that I’m watching, to take pictures of important slides — rather than working too hard to copy them down. Here are some of the quotes I’m running across that you might like or find valuable.
“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet”
“When ever a copyright law is to be made or altered, then the idiots assemble”
Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook, May 23, 1903
I suspect that this next one came from a presentation that I saw by Marc Prenski
Does everything we do have great engagement and gameplay?
Would kids spend their own money for it?Does everything we do empower our students?
Would kids do it in their leisure time?Does everything we do change our students’ behavior, beliefs & attitudes for the better?
Would theymake their friends do it?
This is definitely from one of Prenski’s slides.
“Gamers have amassed thousands of hours of rapidly analyzing new situations, interacting with characters they don’t really know, and solving problems quickly an independently.”
Beck & Wade, Got Game
That’s it for now!
Does everything we do have great engagement and gameplay?
Would kids spend their own money for it?
These questions seem to suggest that what kids spend their own money on must be worthwhile; that teachers should be offering things that kids would be willing to spend their own money on. I wonder to what extent this is recognition of the innate wisdom of kids, and to what extent it is a pedagogical copout: “I don’t know how to keep kids’ attention, and I don’t want to appear old-fashioned or not with it, so I’ll go along with whatever they are doing”. Are kids spending their own money on things that nurture their development with such universal wisdom that the only sensible course is for teachers to give up leading and instead follow? Or are witnessing an abdication of teacher responsibility?
Frankly, it’s a tough call, and I don’t think the question can be answered “once and for all” either way. A lot depends on the kids, the situation, the teacher, and everyone’s varying levels of maturity and wisdom.
Sorry if I’m dragging the discussion down an unintended route, but this is something I’ve been struggling with myself recently. Go here if you want to read more: http://autonolearner.blogspot.com/2005/10/man.html
Marco,
I agree that it’s a tough question to answer, and that there is no one real answer. However, I believe that it is an important question. In the schools in which I was educated, the notion was that you “learned” in school and then “did” after your schooling was over. A majority of the students I graduated with left their senior classes and entered one of the local mills, fulling intending to spend the next 35 years working textiles.
Things have changed dramatically since then, in addition to the fact that none of the 16 mills in my hometown have survived globalization. My point is that learning is no longer a mere matter of schooling, its a way of life, and life-long learning is the only way to prosper.
Our students must leave our classrooms with knowledge. But perhaps even more importantly they must leave with the skills and the desire to continue to learn. I believe that this changes our function as teachers in some important ways, principally that we help our children love to learn.
I also believe that the keys to accomplishing this lies in paying attention to our students. We don’t know what their future will look like — a condition that is happening for the first time in history. The one thing that we do know, is that it is the future that they will choose. This is why I included that statement, that we should pay attention to what they pay money for, and be cognizant of that as we craft learning experiences for our children.
We don’t throw out sound pedagogy. We evolve it with the changing conditions and demands of preparing our children for their future.
Thanks for the comments and the continuing conversation.
David,
Thanks for the thoughtful post. It helped clarify things for me somewhat. The difficulty I see and face, is that, probably due to their incarceration in high school, my students have developed bad study habits and self-sabotaging behaviour. I’ve tried letting them take the lead, but that didn’t really work – they just think I’m goofing off, then they goof off too, and nothing productive gets done. I still think I should follow them in terms of content (or at least topics they are interested in), but work needs to be done before I can get there, before they will provide their input to their own learning at least, if not to the class. There needs to be agreement that we are here to learn; once that is clear, and they take responsibility for that, then I’m happy to offer them choices or let them choose the path and ways and means of their own. But we’re not at base 0 yet!
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