Thursday, December 24, 2009

Learners as teachers

Kids are really good at asking questions? That's what they do.

"Dad, how do engines work?" "Mum, where do babies come from?" "Grandma, why do you have so many wrinkles?" "Mr. Sparks, why does the light shine?" "Josie, why do you have an innie and I have an outie?"

We teachers have become very good at giving answers to their questions. And asking closed questions to see whether they have learned what we have told them. We have become "knowledge tellers", content experts, the sage on the stage and the font of all wisdom, which many of today's interactive kids regard as "totally boring".

But we also use questions to control behaviour. The threat of embarrassment when they give the wrong response (think Pavlov's dogs).  So kids look stupid in front of their peers. And shut the heck up, to stay out of trouble.

No wonder kids stop asking questions.

But what if we could capitalise on this early thirst for knowledge. And get kids to ask fabulous questions and discover the knowledge for themselves, like inquisitive scientists or mathematicians.

It's what business is doing. Shifting the work to the customer. We happily push a trolley around a supermarket to fetch the groceries ourselves. We now get cash from automatic teller machines. We book hotels, hire cars and flights on the Internet. In some eateries we serve ourselves.

What I have in mind is for kids to REALLY teach themselves. Design the lessons. Facilitate workshops. Act as mentors. Help others. Work things out for themselves. Discover knowledge for themselves.



And they can do it very well. A decade or so ago, I was silly enough to co-invent a team learning system comprising a bunch of keyboards and some software that turned a single computer into a group computer. The idea was you asked a series of questions. Everyone brainstormed their ideas, worked out what that all meant. One person operated the computer, everyone contributed.

We found that when you string a series of these rich, open ended questions together, you create thinking or decision making tools you can use over and over again. Not just for problem solving, feedback, SWOT analysis or project plans. But for almost any kind of classroom lesson.

We discovered that really fantastic teachers do this already. They arrange for kids to work in small groups and think/discuss their way through a sequences of questions until they get a result. What something means. How something works. A decision. A plan. A solution. A big idea. A new model. A theory.

Next we discovered kids beat teachers hands down at crafting open-ended questions. Seventy percent of teachers failed the task first time. Why? They are so used to asking closed questions they cant compose an open-ended question if their lives depended on it.

Here's a method for creating question sequences:

1. Describe a topic/issue in five words or less.
2. What is the context for the learning activity? Discipline, focus, age and experience etc. 
3. What will/could excite, engage or amaze the learner? 
4. Make a list of all the ideas/concepts/facts we would like the learner to discover. 
5. Make a list of all the ideas/concepts/facts we could expect the learner to already know. 
6. Craft open-ended RICH questions that explore the topic in engaging/amazing ways. Include scaffolds, rich language etc. 
7. How will we organize the questions into a logical sequence that builds knowledge as the learner goes? Begin with what we know.

Rules for crafting great questions/activities:

1. Socially relevant question e.g. The person sitting next to you tells you they have a contagious disease. What questions should you ask?
2. Open-ended e.g. Thinking about all the different times you have looked up at the sky and all the different colors you have seen. What colors were they and what was happening at the time?
3. Playful - If you could be a fairytale, cartoon, movie or TV character, who would you be and what would you be like to live with?
4. Contains cues- If you were a doctor working in in-vitro fertilization, what kind of patients would you see, what problems would they have and how could you help them?
5. Incorporate a checklist or scaffolds - Write a critique of the painting from the point of view of a person helping the artist to develop their technique. Think about style, tone, texture, materials, colour, etc.
6. Set some rules for success - Complete the series A1, B2 C3......Z26. The winner is the first to finish and the most, accurate in every way, commas, capitals, spaces, numbers and letters.
7. Pictures or documents - Use a picture or a document as a focus for the activity. Create questions to analyse the picture or document.
8. Simulations - Find simulations, e.g. www.worldtime.com or www.howstuffworks.com that can be interrogated by your question sequence.
9. Case studies - Write a series of case studies and ask the participants to explain how they would respond to each situation and why.
10. Arrange questions like a game - Arrange the questions in ascending order of complexity/difficulty starting  with the learner's tacit knowledge. Build feedback into every second or third question to give positive feedback about earlier questions. See picture above.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Creating new knowledge through collective play

Remember a time when you played cops and robbers, doctors and nurses or mothers and fathers.

Play is a way for children to explore what it's like to be an adult. In play, children actively create for themselves, by themselves, their own knowledge in a safe and fun way.

Play evolves as the child matures. In early infancy, children engage in practice or sensorimotor play, and then, prior to going to school, symbolic play emerges in the child, where things represent real artifacts. A stick for a sword. A chair for a house. A cuddly toy for a baby.



By middle childhood, play is conducted as games with rules, collectively. At age six, or thereabouts, children become conscious of their own activities and are able to organize games independently of adults. They explore novel ideas and worlds they do not initially comprehend, absorbing what they are ready for. Progressively, their make-believe creates new meaning and understanding.

Then, during the teenage years, young people are socialised out of play and into study, which is a form of work. In the senior years at school, the main remaining form of play is rule-based school sports.

Collective play has some of the features of self-developing systems, whereby new order emerges that is due to the activity rather than any conscious goal seeking. Vygotsky (1978) showed that through a process that begins with imitation of adult activity, children are able to explore collectively what they cannot do alone. "In play, a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behaviour; in play, it is as though he were a head taller than himself." (p. 102)

We can use this same approach in the classroom to simulate worlds with which the learner may be only partially familiar. We may start with limited knowledge about the characters we will play, but very quickly we start to discover "if this, then that" type knowledge just jumps out of the system.

For example, when we explore the dynamics of an art critic expressing a view about an artist's latest works, we quickly discover that readers want to hear/learn about the artist's role in society and the way their works reflect or comment on changes in society rather than the colors, textures or techniques employed by the artist.

See for yourself:

1. You are the art critic for the New York Times. Thinking about a picture created by Andy Warhol, craft a check list of things to think about when writing art criticism for the newspaper (Marilyn Monroe painting).
2. You have just been to your first Andy Warhol exhibition and seen this painting. In 25 words or less, write the opening paragraph for tomorrow's column (Campbell's soup painting).
3. You are a New York Times reader. Write a letter to the Editor which says what you think about the Art Critic's criticism of the Warhol exhibition.
4. Craft a new list of Things to think about when writing an art criticism. Respond like this (1....., 2......., 3....... etc.)
5. It is several years later. You have just been to another Warhol exhibition. Write a new criticism using your new check list as a guide (Coke bottles).
6. In your opinion, who in society do you feel would have most admired Warhol's work and why?
7. In your opinion, who in society would have least liked Warhol's work and why?
8. Make a list of the roles of the art critic.
9. How did you know how to act/think/talk like an art critic and a newspaper letter writer? What informed the way you wrote?
10. How easy would it be for new kinds of roles to be created in society (that did not exist before), and why would this be so?
11. How easy would it be for new kinds of art forms to be created in society (that did not exist before) and what would be the barriers?
12. What are the major influences that help to shape our opinions about various art forms?
13. If you want to become a successful artist what would you probably have to do attract public attention or gain recognition?

Here's an iterative activity to create a method for learning via play. It has two stages. The first stage is to create a set of questions and to experiment with them. You then apply what you have learned during the first round to create additional questions that allow you to explore the topic more deeply.

1. Craft an idea for an interaction/world you would like your class to explore e.g. Prosecutor, defender, judge and prisoner interacting during a trial. Mechanic and car owner discussing a needed repair. Aircraft pilot and air traffic controller on approach. The US and China as economic powers and what they expect from each other or fear the other will do.
2. For each role, write a short story about the role they might play.
3. Craft a series of questions/instructions for a workshop/classroom group to explore the interaction.
4. Trial the questions and record what you learned from the activity.
5. Write some meta-questions about the issues that the role play exposes.

Note: You can download the images of the Warhol artworks from www.artchive.com.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Learning to feel like an artist

Living the life of an artist is much more than applying paint to a canvas. And it's much much more than  technique, media, color, shapes, textures or random muddling through.

It's the visual expression of ideas so others understand the changing times. It's seeing the world through fresh eyes, from alternative perspectives. It's helping us mere mortals better understand who and what we are becoming as we make the transition from a predictable past to a fuzzy future. A roller coaster ride of emotions, from the passionate to the prosaic.



How does it feel to be an artist? How can we ordinary mortals experience the intensity of the artist's struggle with their works, their audiences and their lives, as they channel the future on our behalf? How can we inspire more young people to embark on such careers of creativity, to explore the world in novel ways, to wrestle with society's big issues, to follow in the footsteps of the greats who have gone before them? So we have a greater pool of cultural creatives to lead us to the future.

The moral, political and social quandaries faced by artists are often captured in what they have to say about their own struggles with their art. Their relationships. And the artist's role as creator, analyzer, interpreter, reporter, provocateur, inspirer, judge and moralist.

Here's a workshop to explore what some say about art and the role of artist:

1. Oscar Wilde said in the Picture of Dorian Gray, “All art is useless.” Write a story that explains this idea.
2. Michelangelo said “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.” Jackson Pollock said “It doesn't matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said.” Craft a dialogue between the two.
3. "Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity" – Daniel Barenboim. Write a story about the Mona Lisa, looking forward and looking back.
4. "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." – Pablo Picasso. Write a story about your own struggle as an artist.
5. “Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.” - Rita Mae Brown. Write a dialogue between a priest, a politician and an actor to show this idea.
6. “Nothing is more the child of art than a garden.” - Sir Walter Scott. Write a story in which the character finds inspiration for her art in nature.
7. “Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” - Paul Gauguin. Write dialogue for a heated argument that explores this idea.
8. “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.” - Frida Kahlo. Write a sad, lonely, contemplative monologue that extends this idea.
9. “I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.” - Michelangelo. Write a story where the character has writer’s block and how it feels.

Check out these images at www.artchive.com