Learning in Teams

Complex project manager, age 2 years

2011-09-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

In a world that has become more complex, ambiguous and uncertain there's a whole bunch of amazing skills which are required to keep big projects from crashing and burning.

Here's a short list: Open-mindedness, adaptability, tolerance of ambiguity, to not jump quickly to conclusions, have a good awareness of fellow team members and how to better serve their needs, to be honest and open with each other in order to develop trust, see things from multiple perspectives and use "gut instinct" well.

Not only are these skill sets in demand for project leaders, but also for people who lead teams distributed everywhere throughout organization systems, so we can more readily help people navigate a rapidly changing world.

Strangely, this complex project manager skill set resembles the skills that kindergarten children already posses or develop, especially the openness to possibility, a thirst for more knowledge and information and preparedness to get on well with other children. If so, then, why, are these skills socialized out of our children by the time they graduate 12 years later, most of them (about 99% actually) removed from the pool of potential complex project managers.

Anecdotal evidence suggest that age and experience and the competencies gained from this way are prerequisites for becoming complex project managers. Associate Professor Anne Pisarski of Queensland University of Technology Business School is exploring whether it is possible for mid-level managers to develop as complex project managers. Why? They are as scarce as hens\'s teeth and increasingly in high demand.

Anne presented some of her early research findings at our International Centre for Complex Project Management conference in Lille, France (August 23-25, 2011) that suggests it is possible to acquire these skills at an earlier age.

So what if these kinds of skills could be acquired, not from the mid-30s, but from the time we start school, or even before. Many Australian early primary classrooms operate this way, so it should not be that hard. What if our project management people were to have a conversation with primary and secondary educators? Might that make a difference?

Complex projects can be almost anything these days, as more and more organization "projectise" their operations, in order to get new activities started and completed faster. Often they have to beg, borrow, steal (and contract) from across their organizations the many disciplines and resources they need (often temporarily) to get new projects up and running.

Big complex projects can be anything from developing an iron ore mine, upgrading a corporate-wide IT system, keeping peace in a war-torn country, sending a man to Mars, re-inventing school education, developing and launching a new drug, or starting a large-scale self-help project in Africa.

Common features of complex projects are many disciplines, messy politics, short completion time frames, rapidly evolving technologies and methods that are out of date before the project is completed and the intersection of many systems.

So here are some questions/activities for educators to consider:

1. If many more people than ever before are required to play the role of a complex project manager, what can we as teachers do, to prepare young people for these capacities?
2. How might young people learn open-mindedness, adaptability, tolerance of ambiguity, to not jump quickly to conclusions, have a good awareness of fellow team members and how to better serve their needs, to be honest and open with each other in order to develop trust, see things from multiple perspectives and use "gut instinct" well. Choose one and give examples of how this might happen.
3. Design a learning activity where young people could practise these complex project management leadership skills a) in primary school b) in junior high school c) in senior high school and d) at university.

The future of childhood

2011-04-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Would you buy a computer if you has to wait 12 or more years for the software programs to download before you could use them? And when you did, discover they are out of date and not much use.

Almost certainly not!

So why do we send our offspring to a place called school, and expect them to remain silent for the next 12 to 15 years of their lives as we fill up their "hard drives" with data rather than practice the ways of being in the world that will be useful to them, right now and later on. How to make decisions. How to design and make stuff. How to perform, speak in public, deliver a presentation, develop and use a thinking or decision method, inspire fellow citizens, contribute to the community, host a dinner party or conduct a conversation.

The world of the child is at the crossroads. The more we teach to the test, which involves ongoing cycles of drilling and testing in order to acheive certain standards, there is less and less room in the school day for the kind of learning experiences that really count. School becomes more and more like a factory and less like the communities and workplaces of the 21st Century.

Says Mitchel Resnik, of the Media Lab at Massachussets Institute of Technology, playful learning experiences were once the norm, but now:

"Kindergarten is undergoing a dramatic change. For nearly 200 years, since the first kindergarten opened in 1837, kindergarten has been a time for telling stories, building castles, drawing pictures, and learning to share. But that is starting to change. Today, more and more kindergarten children are spending time filling out phonics worksheets and memorizing math flashcards [5]. In short, kindergarten is becoming more like the rest of school. In my mind, exactly the opposite is needed: Instead of making kindergarten like the rest of school, we need to make the rest of school (indeed, the rest of life) more like kindergarten."

School is a also convenient child minding service for busy mums and dads, and school is not something kids want to disappear just because it can be boring at times and you can't use the tools like computer, the mobile phone, video and audio producting tools, or games as much as you would like. Kids like school because it offers real 4D connection, at recess and lunch times.

Home is where many kids now live well into their twenties, as it takes much longer to prepare young people for the 21st Century world, so kids are delaying the day when they become fully responsible adults, capable housing themselves and cutting the ties with their parents. But enjoying the benefits of having a good time at the local bar and grill, or even bringing a girl or boyfriend home to warm their single or even double bed, with Mum and Dad's full knowledge is a kind of early adult form of play

There is also another anomoly. Play now permeates adulthood. Increasingly, business games are employed by management teams to explore complex scenarios. Simulations give us the opportunity to understand how to respond to unexpected events. Some businesses operate like games such as our friends and colleagues at Performance of a Lifetime in New York or the military, where complex manouvers are often played out under conditions which closely resemble multiplayer games.

There are also some uncanny similarities between children's collective play and new ways of learning autocatalytically, by setting up the initial conditions, and allowing the newly created knowledge to simply emerge, which is a feature of complex adaptive systems like to the Zing complex adaptive learning environment.

So here is a question sequence to explore the future of childhood in which collective play has a central role:

1. What is it like to be a child?
2. What aspects of being a child are valuable to carry on into life?
3. What is happening to children today that might be different to children of 100 years ago? e.g. making and influencing adult purchases.
4. Describe all the different ways that children play together, e.g. using sticks to represent people, animals and things.
5. What happens when children play together? How do they seem to learn from one another?
6. Describe all the different kinds of games that adult play. e.g. scrabble, cards
7. What can adults learn from the games they play. Choose one game and describe the kinds of learning that might be possible.
8. Describe all the different ways that business uses games, simulations, dilemmas, vignettes, improv etc.
9. What can/does business learn from games/simulations and how does this help leaders better understand growing complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity.
10. Describe a new kind of school, in which play, or playing collective games is the normal way of learning. What would teachers and students do? What would be on the curriculum of a school focused on play and games?
11. Describe a new kind of workplace, in which play, or playing collective games is the normal way of working.
12. Describe a new kind of community in which play or playing collective games is the new way of interacting.
13. What might the future of childhood be in the 21st Century, and how might it be different to the 20th century?

Improv games for new ZPDs

2010-07-06T07:22:00.000-07:00

The Zone of Proximal development is a concept created by Lev Vygotsky, the legendary Russian psychologist, to distinguish between what a child can learn on his/her own compared to the additional development that takes place when he/she learns with help from an adult or more expert person or in collaboration with a peer.

But Vygotsky also showed that when children (and adults, so it seems) play collectively, they "raise themselves up in the zone of proximal development, as if they were a head taller" and create new shared knowledge. Almost magical.

It's the same principle as emergent order in physical and biological systems, where the new structures, chemicals or species emerge through a process of autocatalysis. It's the "kinetic melodies" or neural sequences of gestures, symbols, signs, ideas, concepts and activity that spark new sequences in the human brain.

These days we define the ZPD more broadly, but this same kind of super-development can occur when we participate in any kind of collective play, such as reciprocal teaching, in an interaction with a computer or via overlapping ZPDs in a community of learners. Other ZPDs include a "zone of proximal reflection" as occurs when you keep a journal and you have conversations with yourself, or when you learn with the guidance of a facilitator, mentor or coach who asks you to think about relevant meta-questions or poses new challenges.

The one sure fire way to create collective ZPDs is via play. The Improvisation kind of play. Simulations. Games. Vignettes. Collective pantomimes. The kind of stuff that actors do on the spur of the moment, starting with just a few words or situation.

Here's just a few different kinds of collective ZPDs. The give ourselves an "A in advance" ZPD (which is what Ben Zander, the conductor does to good effect), the authentic happiness ZPD (which is what Appreciative Inquiry is all about, the spiritual ZPD (where we might meditate collectively), the delighted ZPD (where we engage in activities that delight us), or the wunderkammer/curiosity ZPD (for those who collect and share stories about wierd/interesting/unusual objects).

Here are a few Improv games to help you play with other people in new kinds of ZPDs, as well as a method to create your own:

1. Rich questions game: If you could be a fly on the wall, on whose wall would you like to be and what amazing/interesting things might you discover? One person begins, then the next person says...Yes, and...

2. Invent new words game: In threes, write down three unusual words, then each of you have a turn at creating a new word and definining what it means e.g. crack, outside, singing. Outsidecracksinger - a junkie who sings outrageously loudly when he/she is high and is chucked out of his house by his/her partner.

3. The Wisdom Age game: Each of us invents a new job/profession, some new tools and some new rules to apply knowledge wisely. Then we act out those new roles with those new tools and those new rules...and see what happens.

4. Invent a new "Yes, and" game that begin with a sentence, a word, gestures, numbers, musical notes, colours, drawings, poetry, song, situations, scenes from famous movies...etc.

5. Improv game: Design a new Improv game for 10 people to play around some ethical dilemma e.g. capping BPs oil well in the Gulf.

6. Disussion with a famous person game: One person plays Einstein and the other plays Mahatma Ghandi. Act out what they might say and do.

7. Writing for an audience game: You have to give a speech at TED.org. It's a new concept called TED poster girls and boys for up and coming thought leaders. But rather than give you 20 minutes, they have to squeeze you into 30 minute. Write a one minute thought provoking speech about something the world can learn from you.

8. Create your own Improv and ZPD game. Begin by choosing an unusual kind of zone of proximal development (e.g. a walk through the zoo ZPD) and describe the rules for the collective game..e.g. (form two teams, each team chooses an animal, and then plays yes-and to describe the animal. The other team has to guess the animal. The team who get to tell the most yes-and stories wins the game.

Teamwork image, created by Alan Lam, from the Zing title, Dreams, Memes & Themes, 50 meetings to power up your organization.

Deep creativity everywhere

2010-05-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

Just for fun I have been participating in an on-line course on creativity with my favorite group of learning revolutionaries, the East Side Institute in New York.

Twenty three of us have been exploring "Everyday creativity: Teaching and learning for the 21st Century."

This week's task was be creative whenever we encountered a problem. Instead of rushing to a solution, we would write a poem instead.

Poetry is a form of written/spoken language where the words are selected and arranged so the ideas expressed have a musical, rhythmic or sensuous quality. A kind of aural beauty, with it's own unique patterns.

It helped me think about the relationship between the beauty of natural things and tools that humans create, and how we have become "pattern creators" as well as "pattern detectors".

We seem to be genetically disposed to discover beauty in everything. In all its different guises. It's how we make sense of the world. We look for events/things that occur more than once, so we can develop a rule for dealing with what we discover. So we can switch control from the ever-vigilant right frontal lobes to the reliably automatic left. And live in cognitive peace. It's what brains do. It's what sets us apart from our fellow species on planet earth.

We look for repetition, diversity, symmetry, simplicity, fecundity, regularity, self-similarity and brilliance.

These patterns which underpin our creative nature are to be found in the rhythms of day-night, the seasons, animal gaits, heart beats, menstrual cycles and the tides. The spiral nature of galaxies, whirlpools, cyclones, the water disappearing down the plug-hole. The beautiful clockwise and counterclockwise spirals of sunflower seeds. The fractal (self-similar) nature of fern leaves, lightning, blood vessels, the alveoli of my lungs and the arrangements of my neurons. Waves of every kind - the windblown waves in sand dunes and oceans or the ripples on a pond. The sounds of birdsong or the cries of animals. The flocking of birds and the shoaling of fish as the fly or swim a fixed distance apart.

We humans have created our own "species" of patterns. Language, music, mathematics, science, the arts and laws.

And starting with these psychological representations, we render them in physical form to create works of the art, products and tools we use in our daily lives.

Human-made patterns now rival the natural world with their own intrinsic beauty. And sometimes we mistake the models, theories and simulations for the real thing.

Here is an example of a mental model, a powerful way of thinking about how we engage in the world, developed by Howard Gardner, which has it's own intrinsic beauty. It's what Roger Penrose, author of The Emperor's New Mind, would call a superb theory or model. Imagine using this model as the skeleton for a poem...see below for how you can write a line of poetry for each characteristic.

1 Bodily-kinesthetic

2 Interpersonal

3 Verbal-linguistic

4 Logical-mathematical
5 Intrapersonal
6 Visual-spatial

7 Musical

8 Naturalistic

You might like to try these Yes-and poetry games in pairs or as a large group. When we write this way together, it's as if there is an "invisible controller" of the group, that organizes the flow of what we do.

1. Brilliance Yes-and poetry game: On your turn, add three words which express your Brilliance (completeness, blissfulness, rightness, majesty, purity, strength, joy, compassion, love, clarity). Each line of the poem should start with - I feel [complete, or other aspect] when...

2. The Christian Bok Yes-and (Eunoia/beautiful thinking) poetry game: On your turn, add three words at a time, using only the vowel "a". Start with: Abracadabra alarms all

3. The no "e" game Yes-and poetry game. Write a poem, two words at a time, with no letter "e". Start with - All aphrodisiacs

4. Spectacular words Yes-and poetry game. Add two or three word combinations of superlatives/spectacular words only using these starter words - Exquisite phantasmagoria.

5. The Multiple Intelligence Yes-and poetry game. Take turns to create a poem where each line is an Improv game allows us to explore the intelligences. Finish where you started. 1 Bodily-kinesthetic, 2 Interpersonal, 3 Verbal-linguistic, 4 Logical-mathematical, 5 Intrapersonal, 6 Visual-spatial, 7 Musical, 8 Naturalistic

For example:

1. Fly like a bird, up in the sky.

2. Ask each other what you desire

3. Employ a metaphor for saying goodbye

4. 1,1,2,3,5...give it a try!

5. Close your eyes and imagine a lie,

6. Draw a picture that smells like hot pie,

7. Sing us a song that's like angels on high,

8. Listen to the birds as the fly through the sky.

6. The retro-viral poetry game: This is a game that should create new versions of itself, like a retro-virus. It should infect the brain, help create something more spectacular/interesting, and then become contagious.

Create another, more spectacular version of these kinds of questions, that play movies/songs in your mind or tunes on your body...."Thinking about all the different colors of the sky, what colors were they, what was happening at the time and what is the pattern?

For example....

What color is da sky?

Blue you say.

Nay. Think about every other day.

When it was green or black

Or even red or grey.

Write a verse,

Perhaps worse than this,

That gets your brain or body

Laughing it's *....* off.

Spectacular? No. It's just play

7. Starting with a mental model, list all the attributes, then create a line of verse for each attribute. Jungian archetypes, Servant Leadership actions (Haiku), Polarities (Managership-leadership), family roles, Six Thinking Hats kinds of thinking, the senses, the seasons.

Teaching to the test

2010-04-12T14:38:00.000-07:00

The latest reading scores were published in the USA last week.

They showed little change, despite a huge investment in time, student effort and teacher energy.

This means that one in six kids will continue to leave school, functionally illiterate. One in six!

That's 50 million of tomorrow's Americans who will be unable to read, write or count adequately. And as the world becomes more complex, these marginalized citizens will face a dwindling supply of jobs, and the cost of supporting them via the public purse, will continue to climb.

McKinsey, the management consulting firm, forecasts that by 2017, some 44 per cent of all jobs will require conversation and negotiation skills, to help collectively create new knowledge, and use that knowledge to develop new and better products, or deliver new and more powerful or effective services, that improve our quality of life.

So what are schools doing to prepare young people for this kind of world? Certainly not helping young people develop their teamwork or conversation skills, because we know from the research that most US classrooms are designed for "blah, blah, blah" rather than "yak,yak, yak". The teacher at the front of the class lecturing or asking closed questions. The students seated at separate desks, remaining quiet until spoken to.

Could it be that by focusing on the minutae of how well kids can read, write or use mathematical ideas, we are setting ourselves up for failure? Could it be that we teachers "teach to the test" so our schools keep their funding and we teachers keep our jobs? Could it be that short-term memorization strategies are not in our student's long-term best interests?

What if we used the latest knowledge from brain science to guide how we teach? What if we designed an education system that teaches to our frontal lobes, the part of our brain that makes us uniquely human, rather than the ancient "reptilian" brain we have in common with many other creatures, or the limbic brain we and our fellow mammals developed?

Our frontal lobes are responsible for making sense of the world, planning what to do and how to do it. They act as our own personal Google and find stuff for us when we most need it, in the context of a complex problem or issue. They lay down new automatic thinking and acting patterns, so we don't have to push the porridge up our nose every day. They give us the capabilities that most other animals don't have, the ability to use tools, to learn from the past, plan for the future, create new knowledge together, and make new and more powerful tools.

What if we judged teacher and student success by focusing on the bigger picture of student passion, engagement, performance or contribution? So that we create a classroom culture in which young minds and bodies thrive? And where teachers are actually rewarded for teaching this way.

A frontal-lobe focused classroom would provide opportunities for young people to develop their conversation, planning and problem solving skills in interactions with each other. To respect each other, ask rich questions, use different forms of discourse, listen empathetically, persuade an audience, engage in playful simulation or present a performance. They would be prepared for the world that's emerging, not the world of a hundred years ago, when unskilled work was plentiful and technology less complex.

And when we teach this way, the dopamine flows, and gives us enjoyable rewards for successfully completing tasks, especially those that are just a little ahead of our capabilities, like the way games are designed to reward you as your progress through each level.

Think of it this way. If you were a movie mogul, would you judge the success of your movies on a written exam of what moviegoers learned - the minutae, the detail and a fight/flight response - or the jingle of the cash register at the box office and the reviews by the pundits - the big picture, and the flow of good feeling dopamine.

Here's a workshop to explore the mood of your classroom:

1. When you are asked to recall specific information from memory, what emotions do you feel? And why do you feel this way?

2. What is the mood of your classroom? Make a list of the main emotions that students experience during the course of the day, and why they feel this way?

3. What is YOUR mood in the classroom? Make a list of the emotions you experience and why you feel this way.

4. Describe an activity in your classroom when your students experienced positive emotions. What were they doing and what teaching strategies were you using at the time?

5. Describe a time when your students were enthusiastically engaged in an activity for a long period of time, so they did not notice time passing. What were they doing and why did they stay engaged for so long?

6. Thinking about what you know about learning, engagement, our emotions and how the brain works, design a learning activity that generates positive emotions for you and your students, and results in enthusiastic and passionate engagement.
7. Describe a learning activity that is designed to make use of the frontal lobes ability to connect up/develop lower level component skills of reading, writing and maths so they are swept along for the ride.
8. Describe a test that would allow teachers and students to measure the "big picture" aspects of learning including passion, engagement, performance and contribution.
9. Describe a dual system of testing - the "big picture" and the "nitty gritty" so that both act as feedback loops to guide the kind of learning students need to undertake for the future. How would you ensure there is balance between the two?

The knowledge and job creating place/space

2010-02-22T22:23:00.001-08:00

Perhaps it's time we dumped the old-fashioned idea of school. A place to send children 6-7 hours a day to get the 12+ years of programming to upgrade their "stone-age" brains ready for 21st Century use.

Worth the wait? Of course you say. But think of it this way. How would you feel if you had to wait 12 years before you could use your brand new computer? You might prefer to start with what's available today. So why not kids?

Imagine a new kind of learning place/space. For Wisdom Age-ready kids. Who learn how to design and facilitate their own knowledge discovery and wise applications methods. Or go out into their communities to undertake useful projects for others, to serve not only their own interests as learners and people, but also the broader community interest. Who create their own jobs. Or the rich relating, negotiating and inspiring skills that are critical to success.

It's a problem that no one can escape. Our collective knowledge is expanding at an exponential rate. Yesterday's theory is tomorrow's mythology. It's the driver for accelerating change. So by the time our children graduate, the jobs they aspire to today and the tools they will use, will no longer exist. And the content they have been exposed to, but may not have absorbed, will be marginally useful.

So here's a workshop to help young people explore the careers they might like to pursue:

1. Make a list of the top 10 wicked problems or unsolved issues in the world today e.g. injustices that people feel they have to take action against, diseases like malaria that can be dealt with successfully.

2. Thinking about the kind of career you would like to pursue, how could you re-invent this job so that it was a great fit with your sporting, hobby, home or other interests? e.g. rock climbing archeologist, Deep sea diving plumber.

3. Thinking about 2-3 different kinds of jobs/careers that you might like, how could you combine these kinds of jobs into a new super-job which would be more exciting, powerful or interesting.

4. Creating a better world: If you had any powers that you liked, what would you do to change the world for the better e.g. bake scrumptious cakes that people would drool over.

5. Important to keep: What do you really love about the world that is really important to keep and how would you like to play a role in doing that?

6. You have the job of re-inventing jobs, so they are more interesting, exciting, but most-of-all require that you do your work WISELY. How does this change your job? e.g. a hairdresser who helps you develop a plan for different ways to wear your hair, for different occasions or care for your hair between haircuts.

7. In the upcoming Wisdom Age (post-Knowledge Age world) new jobs are being invented in hunter gathering, agriculture, mining, construction, manufacturing, information, and knowledge sectors which add a Wisdom component. Brainstorm some new jobs e.g. Certified ethical hacker, global governance consultant, ecological foot print auditor.

8. Thinking about your new career idea, how could you best serve the interests of others, so there is a win-win-win result? You win, they win and other people win as well.

9. Thinking about your career preferences, how could you redesign the job, so you are always inventing better ways to make the jobs simpler, more efficient, more interesting, or something that others could easily do for themselves?

10. Which other kinds of people in the room could you connect up with to offer a new-to-the world product or service that you could not do alone e.g. hairdresser, self-help expert and trainer.

11. Thinking of a job such as a personal trainer, computer programmer, tour guide, singer, etc. what kind of tool could you invent which would help lots of people improve their lives using your methods?

12. What is the title you will wear on your name badge this year?

The new language of facilitation

2010-02-14T11:46:00.001-08:00

At the start of the 21st century, when accelerating change and growing complexity are the only constants, education administrators, universities, schools and teachers continue to use outdated "knowledge telling" models of teaching and learning that fall short of what we need.

According to management consultants McKinsey & Co almost half of all jobs in the future will require conversation and negotiation skills. The ability to develop a theory or concept, mount an argument, discuss your ideas and persuade others of their value or importance. It's more about the process - thinking, making good choices, knowledge creation or relating to others - rather than the content, although both are important.

It involves a major shift in the way we communicate. From giving direction and instructions. To encouraging participation and the respectful exchange of ideas, empathic listening and creativity. From "I/you" to "us/we".

The problem is that traditional classrooms offer very few opportunities to develop or practice these skills. And the current fad of learning-on-line falls short as well.

If you trained as a teacher in an Industrial Age world of the blackboard, chalk, textbook and knowledge telling, your brain circuitry has been shaped to automatically give instructions, deliver clear explanations in a precise order and ask closed questions. If so, your classroom is most likely to comprise rows of desks facing the front of the room, you see your role as an instructor and you frequently check to see whether your students are learning what you have told them. And although you may use a computer, an electronic white board and a video projector, we, the teachers, are still central stage.

If you grew-up in an on-line Information Age world, you are more likely to be a skilled designer of content or competent with emails and chat. The on-line-learning approach, which some see as the current "holy grail" of education has become popular, particularly with universities, because it can be delivered at very low cost anywhere in the world. The lecture notes are on-line and augmented by fancy simulations. You see much less of your tutor or lecturer, and spend more time writing, completing on-line tasks or regurgitating information to demonstrate that you understand what it means.

And, although the ability to find and re-organize information is an important skill for today's world, it is a far cry from the much more complex task of converting data into knowledge, learning how to apply it wisely and persuading others of the need to act. And on-line-learning tends to be an isolating activity where students work alone in rooms-full of computers or from home.

So why has conversation become a critical skill for a Knowledge Age world?

It's very simple really. What we collectively know is expanding so fast it is no longer possible for any one person or group to have a complete picture. And if your model of how the future might unfold is flawed and you make the wrong investments in skills, equipment and buildings, your choices can become a millstone around your neck.

You can easily be sidelined or beaten to success by more nimble competitors. People with more advanced or appropriate skills. Companies with better products or cost effective production methods. Or nations with competitive advantages like a better education system, or more attractive places to live or invest, or more people with the skills you need for success.

Because its very difficult to create a bigger and better picture on your own, we need to listen to many points of view, and deeply understand what people mean. We need to incorporate most if not all of their ideas into higher level ideas, which embrace all our thinking. Its called dialectical discourse. Or if we want to be sure that our ideas are appropriate for the whole of our society, we need to employ an even higher level conversational skill, which a colleague, Professor Linda Newman, and I call ethical dialectical discourse.

Change is occurring so fast that many of our traditional governance and decision making systems can't keep up. Think of the regulatory, distribution, management and learning failures of the past ten years. The banks and giant companies that were too big to fail, who were unable to notice major changes in the market place, or the dangers lurking in their trading practices. Our inability to reach agreement about what to do about global warning. Our impotence in the face of earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes. Our failure to deal with rogue states. Our inability to look after the poor and the homeless. The way we let young people fail school and fill up our jails to overflowing. The polarization and dumbing down of political decisions in order to win popular elections, instead of providing leadership around breakthrough ideas.

Many more young people are now needed in all walks of life to be wise risk-taking leaders and facilitators of learning, able to create new knowledge themselves and persuade others of its importance. So they grow up ready for a Knowledge Age or Wisdom Age world.

The problem is, we teachers have only learned about meta-cognitive and executive control skills in the lecture theater or on-line and rarely practice these skills. We know the theory of what to do, but we really don't know how to do it. Because we have had so little practice.

On the other hand, pilots are not allowed to fly planes without years of rehearsal. Brain surgeons cant remove that tumor unless they know precisely what to do, without consciously thinking about it. So why should we let teachers teach, if we can't lead and facilitate and regularly practice these skills so they are automatic, easy to do, and be a good role model for young people.

I have hours of videotapes of very good traditional teachers struggling with the new role of facilitator. What to do and say. When traditional teachers try to teach this way, we mess up. What we say is a muddle of "inner speech" used to sequence actions, previously acquired automatic speech routines, authority speech, and the scraps of what we learned to say during our training day. So the next time we think of organizing a class discussion or use some technology in the classroom, we don't.

Facilitation, which is a form of leadership, has a whole new language to learn, processes to follow and a structure that is different to what we currently find in the conventional classroom. How to set up the furniture for conversation. How to initiate and guide the group interaction. How to give clear guidance to orchestrate a group so it can share and manipulate information and resolve their conversations into decisions, theories, models or processes.

Its all about using the inclusive and respectful "we" instead of "I" and "you". Phrases like "what if we?", "Let's" and "It would be good if we could" instead of "I want you to", "you must" or "you will". It's about looking for patterns in what we collectively say, rather than choosing between options, such as "what's the pattern in our thinking" or "how could we pull all our ideas together into a single fantastic overarching idea" instead of "choose the best idea". It's about conducting many conversations at the same time, instead of the loudest dominating. It's "what if we discuss this topic in pairs and then share our ideas with the whole group?" instead of "your idea makes no sense to me". And we used concepts like "ideas" or contributions" instead of "answers" or "responses".

So here are some activities to plan how to conduct conversations in your classroom:

1. Thinking about how your classroom is currently organized, how could you re-arrange the furniture - the tables and chairs - so that everyone can engage in conversation in small groups and pairs?

2. Describe a relating method, like think-pair-square-share, that would allow the people in your classroom to have a conversation with another person and then in either small groups, or the entire class or both, reach a decision where all the opinions are considered and resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

3. Brainstorm a series of open-ended questions from different subjects point of view - maths, science, history etc - to explore the topic of "Body image over the centuries and how our views have changed.

4. Assign each member of the group a different subject area to their own - maths, science, history, art, literature, design, social studies, music, sport - and brainstorm a list of the words used commonly used by each of those disciplines e.g. mathematics - addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, plus, minus, theorem, line, angle etc

5. Brainstorm a list of topics that students could discuss in class in small groups that would bring a broad spectrum of normally separate subjects - maths, science, history, literature, art, design, writing etc. - into the conversation and as part of an argument. e.g. Body image over the centuries and how our views have challenged.

6. Brainstorm some phrases that a facilitator could use to give guidance to a discussion that are inclusive, recognize that all ideas are useful contributions., inspires people to contribute, causes everyone be be involved and engaged.

7. Choose one of the following conversation types and give an example that explains the benefits/advantages and disadvantages. Monologue, Discussion, Dialogue, Dialectical, Ethical Dialectical.

8. Craft/design a series of open-ended rich questions that bring "knowledge" into the process so it can be discussed, evaluated and incorporated into the outcome.

9. Craft/design a sequence of questions that starts with a data collection activity and ends with one of the following. A Theory. A Decision. An Action Plan. A New Understanding. A Concept. A Design.

* Manyika, J.M., Roberts, R.P., & Sprague, K.L. (2007, December). Eight business technology trends to watch. Retrieved February 29, 2008 from http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Eight_business_technology_trends_to_watch_2080

Thinking about thinking

2010-01-31T09:15:00.001-08:00

A current, but largely unrealized objective of school education is for learners to acquire thinking skills so they develop a helicopter view of themselves as learners and begin to recognize thinking methods and mental models as useful tools.

Self regulation and "thinking process" knowledge are critical not only to academic success, but are necessary for the new kinds of Knowledge Age jobs and Wisdom Age (wise application of knowledge) jobs that help us survive a world of ever-accelerating change.

Student access to higher level thinking skills depends on the ability of teachers to be role models, to frame rich questions, or to model the framing of questions, so students can learn to evolve or expand upon ideas, rather than simply reproduce what they have been taught.

But "thinking about thinking", otherwise known as metacognition, is hard for many teachers to understand or explain to their students. It is a fuzzy concept.

Although most teacher have declarative knowledge about thinking, they know what it is, and can use a thinking process themselves, they are often unable to identify the steps in a process, name the parts or explain or derive the rules.

Opportunities for students to practice higher order thinking skills are rare because teachers continue to ask mostly closed questions with a restricted range of solutions. To test for understanding. To keep control of the class. Or teach to a standardized test, which is all about short-term memorization.

Metacognition helps children organize complex sequences of thought or action and is effective for both high and low achieving students. Scaffolds are used by teachers to reduce the processing complexity to help the student develop new patterns of thinking, what steps to follow and in what order. The scaffolds are removed as the learner develops the skills to regulate their own activity.

Most programs to introduce thinking skills into schools fail because teachers also have difficulty arranging and facilitating classroom discussions as part of their teaching practice. Time is wasted completing routine administration tasks and maintaining order. Many teachers struggle to frame open-ended questions (for discussion) instead of the usual closed question (to test for understanding). As a result, students do not engage in dialogue or discussion, which defeats the purpose of the activity. Many teachers find they are unable to complete a round of activities in a 60-minute timetabled period.

But there is some good news. There is now an expanding range of tools to support thinking, question asking, and conversation in the classroom. One new method is Six Thinking Hats developed by Dr. Edward de Bono. He associates colors with different kinds of thinking. Red for feelings. Blue for what next. Black for problems or difficulties. Yellow for the benefits. Green for Creative thinking. White for facts. And to make sure that thinking is not a giant muddle, everyone in the group does the same kind of thinking at the same time, which he calls parallel thinking. For example:

White Hat: What do we know about human cloning?

Yellow Hat: What are the benefits of human cloning?

Black Hat: What are the dangers or disadvantages of human cloning?

Red Hat: How do we feel about human cloning?

Green Hat: What could we do creatively with human cloning?

Blue Hat: What should we do next about human cloning?

Another new approach is the Zing team meeting technology which helps teachers learn how to craft sequences of rich, open-ended questions, to conduct a conversation with a peer, and to share all the ideas with others on the other side of the classroom, before moving on to the next question. Students quickly learn how to craft their own question sequences, and with enough practice, develop metacognitive thinking skills by doing. The tool scaffolds not only the thinking process, but also different discourse models, for example, discussion, dialog and dialectical discourse. An example of a thinking process is this activity from Relating Well, 100 self-facilitated workshops for personal development, to develop an understanding of why society has Rules and Laws:

Make a list of all the rules in your school classroom. What are you expected to do/not do?

Make a list of all the rules at home. What are you expected to do/not do?

What happens if you break the rules at home?

What happens if you break the rules at school?

What could happen if you break community rules or laws?

Under what circumstances is it OK to break the rules? eg. To save someone's life. Give some examples.

If there was only one rule in the world what should it be and why?

Describe a bad rule you think we should change because it is unfair to some people.

Make a list of all the rules that help ensure people can live, safe, happy lives.

If you wanted to get support to change an unfair rule or law, what could you do?

Give an example of what can go wrong when people break the law?

Why do we need rules?

So here is a short workshop to "think about thinking":

1. Yes-no questions - Craft several questions which result in a yes or no answer. e.g. Should we go home now? Do you like sponge cake?

2. Closed questions - Craft several questions which have only one response/answer e.g. What is 1 + 1? Who is the president of the United States?

3. Open ended question - Craft several questions that can be discussed by a group and have more than one possible answer. e.g. What makes you feel sad?

4. When might it be appropriate to ask a closed question? Give examples.

5. When might it be appropriate to ask open-ended questions? Give examples.

6. Concepts catalyze/stimulate other concepts in memory. What do you immediately think about when you hear these words: animals, house, party, game, clothes, water?

7. Rich concepts are very powerful catalysts. What comes to mind when you hear these word combinations? Happy days, famous people, sensitive touch, glorious colors.

8. Brainstorm a series of rich open-ended questions/activities to explore the topic: Body Image - how we look and feel about ourselves. e.g. What do you feel about magazines presenting "thin" as the normal body shape?

9. Here is a list of different kinds of thinking activities. Feel, Choose, Decide, Plan, Consider benefits, Consider disadvantages. Compare alternatives, Make sense of information, Recall facts, Understand something. Choose a kind of thinking and ask a question to ask others what they are thinking e.g. What do you feel about the issue?

10. Create a three-question feedback method to find out what people like or dislike about something, using these three kinds of thinking as a starting point. Like. Dislike. Learn from this e.g. What did we like about the meal we just ate?

11. Most thinking processes start with a focus on the problem or the issue. Brainstorm a list of problems or issues as a concept to be understood: e.g. World peace. The distance from earth to the moon.

12. A great place to start is with what we know, the data, "facts" or prior knowledge. Craft a question/instruction which asks participants to recall what they know. e.g. Make a list of at least five small animals. What do you like about small animals like dogs and cats?

13. The logical order in which thinking steps should be undertaken is like a "thinking journey". Convert this planning process to questions and assemble them in the best order. First five steps. Team members. Success measures. Cost estimate. Main tasks. Technology/tools to be used. Description of the project. Milestones (dates). Project Title. Theory to inform the project. Resources required.

14. Undertake one kind of "opposites" thinking at a time. Split this question into two questions. "What are the benefits and disadvantages of immunization?" Or this one: What did you like or dislike about your holiday?

15. Here is a closed question. What color is the sky? Rewrite this question so that people will share their unique experiences of the sky and what was happening at the time.

An excess of remote experts

2010-01-24T06:39:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered why so many kids find the concepts we teach and the methods we use too abstract, and disconnected from how they participate in the world? And why what they know life away from school - their tacit knowledge - does not seem to matter.

We teachers start our careers prepared to make a difference. But it's so much easier to follow a textbook, prescribed syllabus or worksheets developed by an expert. An expert - who knows what is best for us - who tells us what to teach, and how to teach, and places us in ever tighter straight-jackets, with fewer and fewer degrees of freedom.

But some of the latest research coming out of the Teach for America program shows that teachers who really make a difference, several grades in a year, are those who give themselves wings to fly, who do it their way, who focus on what they believe is best for their kids, right now. Who place the object of study at the center of the learning process, so young people can directly touch and feel it. And who constantly try new methods.

At the heart of what we mostly do as teachers, there is a remote expert who seems to "control" what we do, someone who has developed yet another new way to teach, with proven metrics to support it's use. And some content expert somewhere in the dim, distant past who decided what we collectively know about the world.

Much of the knowledge we have accumulated has been discussed, debated and resolved into concepts, models, theories and methods. We deliver these prepared "packages" to kids. Like so much of the food that we find on supermarket shelves these days. So far from the source kids don't know milk is from cows and bacon was once an animal.

As the image shows, the learner is three steps removed from the object of study.

We mostly learn how to teach in lecture theaters. Instructed by an expert, who learned from another expert. We learn to practice the art of teaching alongside teachers, many of whom are reluctant users of new technologies and stick with "tried and true" methods of "chalk and talk". In some countries, efforts to improve schools performance has lead to the phenomenon of "teach to the test". To keep our funding and our jobs. The hand of the remote expert shows up again..

From a systems thinking point of view, its a self-reinforcing loop that ensures the old ways persist. If the education system was a brain, we would all have obsessive-compulsive disorder, cycling through the same old patterns, unable to create new neural pathway, and snipping off the least used neural circuits to reinforce the old patterns.

And although I'm one of those so called "experts", with my doctorate of philosophy in education, which says I am an expert in a microscopically small part of the education universe, I am in favor of placing the learner center stage as a co-creator of new pedagogical possibilities. And the teacher center stage, with all the encouragement in the world to be inventive and daring. Because there is an urgent need. The jobs of today and tomorrow require these thinking and relating skills.

Here are some questions to explore this issue:

1. What were the main pedagogical techniques when you went to school? Make a list.

2. What are the main pedagogical techniques that are used in the school classroom today?

3. Here is a list of skills that today's young person needs to be successful in the workplace. Explain how students learn these skills in today's classroom. Working in teams. Leading and managing teams. Using thinking and decision making skills routinely e.g. problem solving, strategy, project planning, feedback, design thinking or learning processes for others to follow, make sense out of data, use a computer to create a spreadsheet, write a report, conduct a meeting, deliver a presentation, make a movie, tape an interview, create a model, contribute to and edit a wiki, write and edit a blog.

4. Brainstorm a list of tools (or functions on tools e.g Google Maps) that students use in their personal lives that are not used in the classroom, e.g. mobile phone.

5. Describe what you could do as a teacher to invent or encourage students do invent new pedagogical/learning methods using new and existing tools.

6. Describe what you could do as a teacher to encourage students to experiment with and create new models and theories about real events/things in their lives that are relevant to science, mathematics, social studies etc.

Transforming the "customer"/learner experience

2010-01-18T09:38:00.000-08:00

Question: How do you improve the patient experience at a busy hospital? Answer: You ask staff to directly experience what it is like to be a patient.

Giving staff a simulated experience of being a patient is what a big hospital in Cleveland USA is doing, as part of their introduction of "Serving Leadership", a way of inverting the leadership pyramid, serving the interests of others, raising the bar on what people do and achieving a higher purpose.

You soon discover what it feels like to take away your clothes and your possessions. To wait. And wait some more. To be shunted around from one diagnostic test to another. To be told little or nothing. To become a number in the system. To be patronized. To be unable to see what doctors and nurses record about you and your condition, in case they have it all wrong. Not enough respect for your liking. Being bossed around. Eroding your self esteem.

So what if we could the same for schools? So we teachers could have a direct experience of how young people see the impact of what we do. The fear of closed questioning that shuts down your brain. Constant knowledge telling. Blah. Blah. Blah. Making demands about behavior. The constant testing. Marking the attendance register. Sitting quietly until spoken to. Ridicule or sarcasm if you can't answer a question or to make you sit still/quietly. The resentment at being treated disrespectfully.

Seymour Papert of MIT Media Lab once said that there were three professions that had changed so little during the 20th century that anyone transported from 100 years ago could perform the job just as well as anyone born today. Health workers. Prison officers. Teachers.

The customer experience all depends on the kind of relationship we choose to have with our customer. The global management consultancy, McKinsey, says the next big thing in the business world is co-creating the future with the customer. No longer does the supplier have all the knowledge. And customers know what they want to be different or better.

It's the same in the world of education, particularly with easy access to the Internet, where knowledge is ubiquitous. Kids can easily teach themselves about amost anything if they are sufficiently motivated. In the United Kingdom, where an effort is being made to improve the learning experience for a disenchanted generation, schools are listening to what their students have to say about their lessons, so teachers can design classes that are more exciting, engaging and effective. It's called Student Voice. And because administrators have not been listening to the issues encountered by their teachers, there's a similar program for teachers, called Teacher Voice.

The new relationship with our customers also demand a change in the language we use. If we want to become a "serving leader" organization, little will change if we talk to each other in the old ways. It's like a computer programmer, brain surgeon or an airline pilot trying to use the language of 10,000 years ago to do their job. There are thousands of concepts and their meanings missing from an Agricultural era vocabulary which limit what you can communicate, or result in such impossibly long descriptions, you would need two or three paragraphs or pages to describe a concept.

Its seems time then to define the respective roles of the patient/nurse or doctor, and the student/teacher and the nature of the relationship in new ways.

So here's a workshop to change the learner experience, which could be just as easily applied to hospital patients.

1. Describe the student experience in a school classroom. What do teachers do and say, and what are the consequences for their students?
2. Form into several groups of four or five people. One person is to be the teacher, the rest are to be students. Act out what teachers do or say. Repeat the activity with a different person as the teacher.
3. Thinking about each of the actions the "teachers" performed, what they did and said, how did you feel and how did you want to respond?
4. Thinking about your reactions, develop ideas for what teachers can do or say to engage with students that improves the "customer" experience, e.g. is respectful, positive and helpful/conducive to learning.
5. What should be the role of the teacher and the student in the context of 21st century values?
6. What names could you use for "teacher" and "student" that better reflect their new roles?

Learners as teachers

2009-12-24T23:27:00.000-08:00

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.

Creating new knowledge through collective play

2009-12-19T12:18:00.001-08:00

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.

Learning to feel like an artist

2009-12-16T22:58:00.000-08:00

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

Building firmer maths foundations

2009-11-26T16:45:00.001-08:00

Ever wonder why young people struggle with mathematics? Some say it's too abstract. But very practical users of maths like accountants and store clerks would probably disagree. Others say it's too disconnected from real life, but most tradesmen would point out you cant build a house, lay bricks or make furniture without it. Some think its because we teach maths as technique. But architects, engineers and physicists rely on routines to make numerous calculations simple.

Another view is that unless your teacher knows their mathematics, neither will you. But as any teacher will tell you, neophyte teachers often learn more about a subject by teaching it. That's how I learned to love maths.

The biggest problem maths teachers face - especially in secondary schools - is the poor foundations on which they are having to lay more complex concepts in algebra and geometry. It's like trying to stand a skyscraper on tree stumps.

The problem begins in primary school. If you can't understand numbers, fractions and decimals and the four basic functions - add, sutract, multiply and divide - you are not in the race. Or if you can't tell the difference between a circle and an ellipse, or a square and a rectangle, or comprehend angles, you are also in trouble.

Most primary teachers have very little confidence is their own maths ability and even less in their ability to help young people learn the basics. The last time most primary students in the UK studied maths was towards the end of secondary school. Now the UK government is spending million of pounds to hire 13,000 maths specialists to coach students and teachers. The USA has similar problems. Just 27 per cent of 600 Massachusetts teachers who took a teaching licensing exam passed the maths part of the test, although most of those who failed, went on to become teachers.

But simply knowing your maths may not be enough. How you learn maths could be much more than important, such as learning to discuss mathematical ideas, in addition to knowing how to use mathematical techniques/operations.

I have had the pleasure of working with some gifted mathematics teachers such as Ian from Middlesborough in the north of England. They are gifted because they inspire young people to fall in love with mathematics. It's not only because they know their mathematics but because they know how to engage young people in exploring the patterns and the mysteries.

Middlesborough Ian helps "feral" secondary students become capable mathematicians in less than 12 months. He uses an approach which is more akin to the "change management" tactics employed in big corporations. Very few of the techniques are specific to mathematics. But every primary school teacher would recognize the teaching techniques he applies as the fundamental principles of "co-operative learning".

The students practise working/learning in groups. They give leadership to their peers, helping each other achieve their goals, resolving conflicts and communicating ideas. They value their own opinions and the opinions of others. Along the way, they play with mathematical ideas and begin to think, act and and feel like a community of mathematicians. They could be just as easily be learning to think and act like geographers, scientists or writers.

The class is organised into three groups. A demonstration team guides other groups through whole-of-class learning activities using a team learning system. A resource team searches the internet for images, videos, simulations and sounds that can be used with questions and question sequences used to explore mathematical topics. Activity builder teams, which includes everyone in the class, design and create the questions and methods and decide which to trial.

Most class activities begin with a ten minutes-long engaging, fun activity that reflects on previous learning, not necessarily about mathematics, but often about general student literacy or a mental oral activity.

Six months into the school year, the culture of the class begins to change. The teacher is no longer "the enemy" but is valued as a mentor and challenger. The students begin to see themselves as "risk takers", willing to explore any new ideas to which they are exposed. They take full ownership of their activities and the bad behaviour evaporates.

There is a good explanation for this change, and it is provided by Complexity Theory, which predicts how systems change state, like the shift from ice to liquid water. A group of students is just another system. New order emerges in the group "auto-catalytically" when the discussion cross-fertiilizes other discussion. This occurs when the ideas provoke so many new ideas, that the process becomes, self-sustaining.

Like a contagious disease!

Here's an example of a workshop designed to help students create their own learning activities:

1. Search the internet for an image, simulation or website that would help you learn about the names of the parts of a circle, and how to calculate the diameter and circumference. Make a list of the sites, images etc.you have discovered and what each explains.

2. Design an activity/sequence of questions to a) describe all the parts of a circle and b) how they relate or connect to each other.

3. Describe a technique for calculating the circumference of a circle if you know the radius. Give an example

4. If you know the diameter, how could you go about calculating the circumferene of the circle. What's a really simple trick/technique to remember?

5. Describe a technique for measuring the area of a circle if you know the radius? If you know the diameter?

6. Explain the number Pi to a five year old.

Fitzgerald, R.N., & Findlay, J. (2006). Transforming a mathematics classroom with new roles, rules and tools. Presentation at Transformational Tools for 21^st Century Minds conference, Rockhampton, October 25-27, Queensland. Download this article.

Creative writing with constraints

2009-10-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

Fancy yourself as a poet? It's actually quite easy if you practice the arcane literary art of constraint-based writing. Leave out a letter. Use only certain letters. Use only some words.

Imagine the havoc that missing "a"s or "e"s would have on Shakespeare's Macbeth, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. Gibberish perhaps.

But not when you deliberately write that way.

Christian Bok, author of Eunioa, which literally means beautiful thinking, is a master of the art. Eunoia has five chapters - A, E, I, O and U. The words in Chapter A contains only "a"s such as all, ball, bat, chat and abracadabra. Each chapter follows the same rule.

Australian teen author John Marsden teaches young people to write great stories using sets of rules, which implement some of these constraints. Rules such as "Don't let language bully you", "Capture the voice of the character" and "Show, don't tell a story."

When he asks you to "Write a story about the ocean without using the letter "e", all that rolls of your ball-point sounds like poetry. It's a form of constraint-based writing.

Some of the people in our network use these kinds of fun activities to warm up the conference crowd before we get down to the strategizing and decision making. Here are some examples of what some people collectively contribute. My favorite is the pirate talk, achieved by breaking the lipogram rules and using words containing "e", but simply omitting the letter:

Crabs fly through big salty H2O. Happily nibbling on all and sundry.
Swimming cold. Trusting cool liquid to quickly coat my throat. I spang to my fins, arms thrashing in windy rolling mountains of foam.
Da c is big and runs from wall to wall. Its long and high and if you fall in you will want to dry off. My mum says that it was not so high as it is now, that it is low at night. I think gravity has a tug and that this is why it slops about.
In aqua crystals. Starfish, sand, and a pail of clams. I go for it, baby!
Oshorn ar to b sailin d ruddy o's'n aaaaarrrrrgh @ d nd to b shor ma 'arty splis d bldin main bras i'll b skutlin yr buttlin on d mount of yi (splash splash splash) undr d oishin hoit da joli rogr o giv mi a 'ome v'r d mrmaids doz roam aayh.
An old man took a boat out far into a vast and wild mass. His craft was still and placid. It could not align with fish nor fowl.
Foam. Flotsam. Rolling loud crashing fluid. A shark fish swam in coral again.
An old man's rod knocks against boat in a tidal pool whilst fish, stingrays and crabs swam in salt flats.

So here's a workshop to practice your skills using various kinds of constraints:

1. Write a story about the ocean without using the letter "e"

2. Write a story about your life using ONLY the letters a,e,t,h,m,n,r,s,w.

3. Write an anthem for Africa, America, Australia or Asia using ONLY words that begin with the letter "a". e.g. Artists and artisans are attracted as Africa arises. Ascendant.

4. Write a story on any subject using ONLY or ALL the first 100 most frequently used words in English.

5. Write a story using words with no vowels using this list. You might have to use a dictionary to see what the words mean:

6. Write some snazzy words for a song to celebrate what your class, school, team, group or organization is going to do next year. Use alliteration, so most/all of the words start with the same letter. Choose any letter you like. e.g. Smart Students Sing Scintillating Songs.
7. EUNOIA means beautiful thinking and contains all the vowels - a, e, i, o and u. Make a list of words containing ONLY the vowel “e” for example, men get.

8. Brainstorm words with ONLY the vowel "a". 1 vowel = 1 point, 2 vowels = 2, 3 vowels = 5, 4 vowels = 10, 5 vowels = 50, e.g. abracadabra = 50 points

9. Write a story using words that only contain the vowel "a", such as lava, cat.

10. Brainstorm words with ONLY the vowel "e”. . 1 vowel = 1 point, 2 vowels = 2, 3 vowels = 5, 4 vowels = 10, 5 vowels = 50, e.g. abracadabra = 50 points

11. Write a story using words that only contain the vowel "e", such as better, lever, me.

12. Brainstorm words with ONLY the vowel "i”. . 1 vowel = 1 point, 2 vowels = 2, 3 vowels = 5, 4 vowels = 10, 5 vowels = 50, e.g. abracadabra = 50 points

13. Write a story using words that only contain the vowel "i", such as sit, bit, wilt.

14. Brainstorm words with ONLY the vowel "o”. . 1 vowel = 1 point, 2 vowels = 2, 3 vowels = 5, 4 vowels = 10, 5 vowels = 50, e.g. abracadabra = 50 points

15. Write a story using words that only contain the vowel "o", such as moon, pot, soon.

16. Brainstorm words with ONLY the vowel "u”. . 1 vowel = 1 point, 2 vowels = 2, 3 vowels = 5, 4 vowels = 10, 5 vowels = 50, e.g. abracadabra = 50 points

17. Write a story using words that only contain the vowel "u", such as cut, mutt, bus.

Preparing for the school inspection

2009-10-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

A sudden visit from the school inspection service (OFSTED in the UK) can bring terror to the heart of even the best and most experienced Head Teacher.

These days, not only do teachers have to demonstrate their pedagogical competence but they also have to show how well they work alongside parents, carers and other agencies such as the police and health services in the interests of the children.

OFSTED is the acronym for the Office for Standards in Children's Education and Skills which one Catholic School wag once described as standing for "Our Father Send Thee Eternal Damnation" which somewhat summarizes the general feeling of many head teachers.

The inspection process is a combination of self-evaluation, visitation/observation and a review of the records of your students' performances.

Prevention is better than cure. If you take positive steps to make improvements to your school ahead of inspection, the chances are you will be judged well, despite the difficulties you may encounter such as chronic absenteeism, bullying, racism, mass disengagement - 60 per cent of students in OECD countries are bored by school - or the 1-in-6 who leave school unable to read, write or count properly.

UK schools are judged on:

* Student performance (attainment, progress, dealing with disabilities/learning difficulties, whether they feel safe, adopt healthy lifestyles, contribute to the school or wider community. develop workplace skills that help them be successful in life ad whether how well they are catered for morally, socially, culturally and spiritually)

* Teacher performance (quality of teaching, assessment to help learning, whether the curriculum meets student's needs, and the care guidance and support that teachers give students).

* Leadership effectiveness (how well the leadership team drives improvement of teaching and learning, the role of the govering body in tackling issues, engagement with parents and carers, partnerships with others, promoting community cohesion and spending the budget well).

Parents also get to have a say about your performance and so do the students.

If you are taking positive steps towards improvements in all critical areas you will earn brownie points. If the parents think you are performing wonders, even though the changes are snail's pace incremental, then that will help your case. If you address individual learning styles, student safety and enjoyment and the special needs of students you will be rewarded.

The four ratings you can be given are Outstanding, Good, Satisfactory and Inadequate.

There are 25,000 schools in the United Kingdom and at any one time 40% of those schools are judged Satisfactory. That's 10,000 Head Teachers who live in constant fear of a downgrade to Inadequate or in the earnest hope their efforts will be judged Good.

Here's a check list of what schools can do to make life easier for themselves:

* Self-evaluation: Regularly and collectively complete the school self-evaluation against the "schedule of judgments". Develop develop strategies and action plans to deal promptly with every issue where the school has shortcomings. Expand the programs that work well. Involve the board of governors in planning for the future.

* Parent and carer engagement: Regularly conduct workshops with parents to get on top of their concerns about student progress, safety and wellbeing. Set up mini task forces so parents/carers can take some responsibility for resolving generic issues.

* Other agencies: Conduct regular meetings with other agencies to deal strategically with issues that cross agency boundaries e.g. crime, truancy or violence.

* Student voice: Conduct workshops with a large sample of students to learn how to better meet their specific learning needs, what captures their attention, what they like and don't like about their lessons and which kinds of pedagogical approaches work best.

* Professional and leadership development: Use the student voice outcomes as a basis for individual professional development.

Here's some workshops from the School Futures and Children Matter software applications from the Zing range of education titles that can help schools prepare for inspection and elevate their performance:

* A self-evaluation workshop to report on the effectiveness of the provision. There are six workshops which help staff collectively prepare for inspection:

1. Quality of teaching: How does teaching promote learning, progress and enjoyment for all pupils? e.g. range of teaching styles/activities, use of time, appropriate use of technology, builds on what students know, lesson planning etc.
2. Quality of teaching: How is assessment used to meet the needs of all pupils? e.g. the pupils know how they are doing, personalised learning, effective questioning, alert to errors/misconceptions.
3. Curriculum: How is the curriculum relevant to the needs of individual and groups of pupils and its impact on outcomes? e.g. memorable experience, rich opportunities, designed/modified to meet individual/group needs, extended/improved, etc.
4. Care, guidance and support: How is care and support provided to promote learning, personal development and well being? e.g. making use of parent and pupil views, welcoming environment, transition from nursery, between years and to secondary. vulnerable groups. challemging behaviour and to promote attenance.
5. Care, guidance and support: Write a story/case study about a potentially vulnerable child and show how you school provides effective, care guidance and support.

* Student voice workshops. See the blog: What young people want from school.

* School development: A professional development planning workshop to follow on from a student voice review of what students enjoy/dont enjoy about their school experience:

1. In 20 years time, what skills, capabilities and knowledge will our current students need to be successful in the world?
2. Describe the current problems that teachers experience in the classroom and how this affects teaching and learning. Respond like this (problem: impact).
3. Describe the current successes that we have in the classroom and how this benefits our students or society. Respond like this (successful activity: benefit)
4. If you had the task of remodelling/creating the ideal school, how would it be structured differently/the same? (classrooms, facilities, furniture, equipment, play areas, style).
5. What approaches to teaching and learning should we ideally retain or further develop to help equip our students for the future?
6. What aspects of our current approaches to teaching and learning will be need to eliminate if we are to be more successful in the future?
7. If we were to create a model of the ideal teacher, what would he/she be?
8. If we were to create a model of the ideal principal and senior staff, what role and management style should they have?
9. What should we do to cater for different learning styles?
10. What should we do to deal with current learner dissatisfiers with school, especially boredom and anxiety?
11. What should we do to deal with learners with disabilities?
12. What should we do to deal with learners who learn at differential rates.
13. What models of teaching and learning should we apply and in what contexts?
14. What should we do better manage the transition from primary to secondary schools?
15. What should we do to ensure that students at risk of non-completion are identified early and assisted?
16. What new/emerging pedagogical methods should we be aware of and be experimenting with in our school?
17. What should we do to deal with/capitalise on the differences between teacher and learner technological competence?
18. What should we be doing to satisfy or manage the expectations of parents, employers etc.
19. What models of teaching and learning around the world are we aware of that we could either emulate or surpass?
20. What should we be doing to cater for differing career paths, especially the vocational and academic divide?

* Engaging with parents: Here's the Staying safe workshop from the Children Matter workshop series. The six workshops are designed to achieve desirable health, enjoyment, achievement, positive contribution and economic well-being goals for young people.

1. How can we ensure children & young people and their carers are informed about key risks and how to deal with them?
2. What steps should be taken to provide children and young people with a safe environment?
3. What steps should be taken to minimise the incidence of child abuse and neglect?
4. What child protection arrangements should be put in place to meet the requirements of "Working Together to Safeguard Children"?
5. What should we do to ensure children and young people who are looked after are helped to stay safe?
6. What should we do to ensure children and young people with learning difficulties and disabilities are helped to stay safe?
7. How can we ensure that children affected by repeat domestic violence are identified, protected and supported?
8. What guidance and training should we provide to staff, carers and the public on how to recognise and raise child protection concerns?
9. How should we ensure there are secure arrangements for the recording and sharing of information on children and young people at risk, especially those crossing council boundaries and countries?

Talk like a scientist or expert

2009-09-04T22:54:00.001-07:00

Although most of us can list the big inventions of the last century, very few of us can explain the theories. Think electromagnetism, nanotechnology, quantum dynamics, thermodynamics, nuclear fission or fluid dynamics.

Now, thanks to on-line encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and websites with interactive models, most of us can go on-line and learn about the theories for ourselves.

Knowledge that took centuries for the best brains in the world to discover and turn into well-tested theories can now be acquired in an afternoon by almost anyone.

But the act of observing a colorful, interactive model all on your own, may be just as ineffective as trying to memorize the old paper-based models they replace. Medical students, motor car mechanics and computer programmers can attest to the complexity/difficulty of rote learning new families of concepts, what they mean and how they connect to each other.

But there is a more effective way.

When you discuss a model/theory with others, the concepts become associated with concepts we already know. Over time, as we use the words, we strengthen the neuronal connections associated with the concepts, and so our own personal Google - our frontal lobes - has less trouble finding stuff when we need it.

In this way, learning shifts from being a left brain/hippocampus activity to a right brain problem solving/sensemaking approach.

By playing with and talking about any of the tens of thousands of models that your will find on-line you can start to think/act/talk like a scientist, mathematician, geographer, writer or the expert you would like to be. For example, How Stuff Works is a treasure trove of working models which you can link to and explore with others as shown in this image

Theories and models have come to have a life of their own. We often treat them as the real thing. The computer simulation, the town plan, the business spreadsheet, the script for a play, an orchestral piece, the steps for a dance, a shopping list, the cargo manifest or an airline ticket with its destinations and flights. They all represent something else.

What begins as a vague concept can grow up into a theory or a model and become a psychological tool that can be used initially by a handful of experts or professional few, but at a later stage of development by novices who learn the specialized language. At the same time a lexicon is developed. We name the parts of the technologies/tools to explain the ideas/methods to the novices which contributes to the further development and the spread of the language associated with the tool.

Here's an example of a method to discuss how an engine works:

1. Go to How Stuff Works and look at the engine simulation
2. Make a list of all the parts of the engine, e.g. piston, valve
3. Choose one engine part. Name the part and describe what you think it does.
4. Choose another engine part. Name the part and describe what it does. Improve on other people's ideas.
5. You are a mechanic and you have to explain how an engine works to an apprentice. In 30 words or less describe how an engine works.
6. What improvements do we need to make to our descriptions of how an engine works?
7. Use the best descriptions of how an engine works to improve your description of how an engine works.
8. What did you discover/learn today?

Collecting-connecting words via "language games"

2009-09-04T15:47:00.001-07:00

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein showed that concepts are part of a language game. They live in wondrous webs (or families) of meaning, connected by how similar or different they are to other concepts.

Brains remember by association. The memory of a concept can deliver up its' friends. They are autocatalytic and catalyze other concepts. When our own personal Google - our frontal lobes - goes out to search for associated ideas, it links to stuff we have experienced, read, seen, heard or felt before.

We get to know the concepts at the periphery of our memory by using them more frequently, especially if we use them in the context of other words. The synapses between the neurons in our brains are strengthened and recall becomes easier/faster/more automatic.

We can use this knowledge to design learning activities which develop new and strong associations with new or unfamiliar concepts.

Most often we know what we experience by the labels we give to events, things and how the events occur. And once we label something, the label sets it apart from ideas that are similar. Or its' opposites. The word "yes" can easily recall its' opposite "no", or indeterminate, "maybe". Or be connected into different kinds of categories.

If you ask people to perform a word association activity the words come tumbling out. Think vegetable and you immediately get carrot, potatoes, peas, lettuce and tomatoes and dozens more. We know these words because we consume them frequently. If we ask people to list the parts of a plant the words may be recalled more slowly, but if we direct their attention to the various aspects of the plant and stages of development with prompts e.g. petals,... or e.g. seed,... the task is made easier. By using the words frequently we become familiar with their meaning and their links to other words.....think roots, stem, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit, stamen etc.

Acquiring new words maybe slow to start but over time it becomes an avalanche, especially if you read and talk about stuff, often. Generally around 5 to 10 new words every day. A child of three has a vocabulary of 500 and 1000 words developed via 200,000 and 500,000 lifetime interactions. The more interactions, the more words and connections.

Over time this is how we progress:

3-year old: 500-1000
5-year old: 5,000
13-year old: 20,000
College student: 50,000-60,000 words

Here's the 100 most frequently used words in the English language. We learned most of these when we were very young. It's a whole bunch of basic verbs (doing words, e.g do, make), pronouns (that define who/what we are talking about, e.g. the, I, you, me), prepositions (that tell give a sense of direction/place/space, e.g. in, on, over, into) a handful of nouns (the what words, e.g. year, day, house, John), adverbs (that describe the verbs e.g. ran quickly, spoke clearly) and adjectives (that describe the nouns e.g. blue sky, happy boy).

"the, be, to, of, and, a, in, that, have, I, it, for, not, on, with, he, as, you, do, at, this, but, his, by, from, they, we, say, her, she, or, an, will, my, one, all, would, there, their, what, so, up, out, if, about, who, get, which, go, me, when, make, can, like, time, no, just, him, know, take, people, into, year, your, good, some, could, them, see, other, than, then, now, look, only, come, its, over, think, also, back, after, use, two, how, our, work, first, well, way, even, new, want, because, any, these, give, day, most, us."

Australian teen author John Marsden has a wonderful workshop exercise to teach young people how to write brilliant prose. To practice the rule, "Don't let language bully you" he asks you to "Respond to the calling of the class roll", with "Yes, Present, Here Miss....etc." In a few minutes a group of students will generate a list of 30-40 variations on the theme.

So here's an example of workshop where we practise the use of new concepts in a way which helps us remember their connections to words we already know. You can use a visual thesaurus to access words you don't know.

1. Make a lists of all the different kinds of relationships you have e.g. friends, etc.
2. Brainstorm a list of different kinds of emotions/feelings you experience e.g. happy, angry.
3. Choose one emotion from this list and explain what causes you to feel that way. Angry, happy, sad, bored, lonely, excited, nervous, stressed.
4. Based on your personal experience, what are the best ways to make and keep good friends?
5. Based on your personal experience, what are the best ways to have a bad relationship with other people?
6. From this list of aspects of personal relationship issues, choose one and describe what it is - trust, support, meanness, dishonesty, friendship, empathy, sympathy.
7. Make a list of all the events in your life where you feel a sense of gain/improvement.
8. Here are some positive relationships events. Empathy, sympathy, concern, congratulations, hugs, hand shake, caress. Choose one and describe how this could contribute to a feeling of wellbeing.
9. Make a list of all the events in the life of a person where there might be a sense of loss.
10. Here are some serious relationships problems or events; bullying, racism, fight, theft, assault, revenge, criticism. Choose one and explain how this could contribute to a sense of loss.
11. Make a list of words about relationships and feelings you discovered/played with today or better understand their meaning by linking it to other words you know. e.g. miserable - sad, unhappy etc.

Learning faster with gestures

2009-08-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

If you are a teacher who organizes small group conversations or uses new tools in the classroom it is really important to give clear instructions to orchestrate the group activity.

Fluff your lines and the participants will not be sure what to do. Make a mess of using a tool and you might appear incompetent, and so destroy your carefully cultivated professional image.

But there is a faster and more certain way to remember and fluently give instructions to your students or participants.

It's all connected to how we "program" our brains using language and gesture. It's the way we learned to do new stuff when we were very young.

At a certain stage in their development, children talk silently to themselves to sequence and organize new actions. Older people occasionally do the same. We think aloud when faced with a complex/difficult task, when under pressure or when we feel tired. If we are a teacher or presenter, our external "inner speech" can quickly become a muddle with hard-to-remember precise instructions, old speech routines that belong to another topic and the authority speech we use to keep the group under behavioral control.

But if we associate gestures with the instructions, magically we remember the correct sequence, a kind of spatial or kinesthetic memory. Memories of the words and gestures point to each other in memory and reinforce each other.

Gestures and speech go literally hand-in-hand. They fit like a glove. Sometime gestures complete what we say, or explain with a flourish what we mean, develop a life of their own or even become independent languages. Emblems are gestures with special meanings such as thumbs-up for "Yes!" Signs are a language in their own right, such as pointing to yourself to indicate "me". And pantomimes are complete stories using gestures of various kinds.

The orchestration of speech and gesture occurs in Broca's area, a part of the brain where the sequencing of motor and speech actions are side-by-side. The same mirror neurons fire when we see others performing an action as when we do it ourselves. What begins in young children as pointing and grasping becomes a veritable avalanche of gestures at about age three co-expressed with the sequencing of words.

Here's a workshop to practice gestures, emblems, pantomimes and signs:

1. Brainstorm a list of all the different kinds of GESTURES you have seen people use when they communicate with others e.g. OK sign where the thumb and pointer finger make an “O”.
2. Take turns to explain to your partner, “what Life’s like at my house”. Make notes of the GESTURES that each person uses and what they were saying at the time. Then capture a list of the gestures: what people were saying.
3. As a group, play two rounds of Charades. After each turn, from memory name the mystery activity and describe the GESTURES each person used to offer clues.
4. EMBLEMS are gesticulations which have developed their own special meanings e.g. V for victory. Describe as many emblems as you can.
5. SIGNS are a complete language in themselves. Design a language using a mixture of signs for common concepts as such as me, you, come, go, up, down, into, through, house, car,
6. PANTOMIMES are sequences of gestures that tell a story. Craft a description of some gestures and the story that they tell.. e.g. you and I will drink tea...(points to other person, then points to self, then holds thumb and first finger together and lifts to mouth).
7. Propose a hypothesis for how gestures, emblems, pantomines and signs might develop in childhood. Consider these points in your theory. Brain cells represent cells. Speech and gesture are co-expressive. The orchestration of motor and speech actions are side by side in Broca's area of of frontal lobe. The same mirror neurons in Broca's area fire off when people watch others perform an action and when they perform the action themselves.
8. Design a learning activity which makes use of the features of mirror neurons and the co-expression of gesture and speech.

Out of control

2009-08-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

The lecture is a very persistent "meme" that refuses to go away. This curious form of "knowledge telling" is the main way teachers and lecturers communicate with students.

The word "lecture" comes from the Latin lectus, which is the past participle of legere "to read" which is what some people do when they simply read aloud the words crammed onto their Powerpoint slides or the text of their lecture notes.

At first glance, the lecture seems to give a speaker considerable control over the audience. People sit quietly/respectfully in their seats. They listen. Some make notes. Others ask questions at the appointed time. Most remain in their seats until the lecture is over. Then they leave.

But the reality can be quite different. Unless the audience is so entertained by the topic or so enthralled by the speaker their minds may be somewhere else. Thinking about sex, shopping, what to buy for dinner or the hot guy in the first row. Some snooze. One or two snore.

My friend Professor Emeritus Sean O'Connor conducts a workshop to demonstrate the difference between the lecture and the workshop. He shows how workshops allow the facilitator to exert remote control over the learning experience.

He divides the session into two half hour activities. The participants are invited to use a sequence of questions to guide their discussion about a poem, such as Samuel Coleridge Taylor's poem..."In Xanadu did Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome decree...." Then he asks the participants to critique their discussion.

Most groups report that the process was very democratic, everyone had a say, they were very creative and it was fun. They also conclude the process gave them control over their own learning.

Sean begs to differ about the issue of "control".

He begins by asking "who gave you the task?

"You did," they tentatively reply

"Who gave you the process to explore the topic?"

"You did." they say.

"Who performed the task as requested?"

"We did." they chorus.

"So who was in control?"

"......You were." they reluctantly acknowledge.

You too can regain control over the learning process by combining the "information" elements of the lecture and the "interactive" elements of the workshop...even if the audience is seated in rows like a lecture hall or classroom.

In doing so you can become a challenging Interactor - an inspirer, provocateur, orchestrator and facilitator of knowledge creation - who asserts power and influence by helping people engage with each other in new and interesting ways. They will never forget you, the experience or what they learned during the process.

Here's a workshop to help you achieve the best of both worlds:

1. Briefly describe a topic and the main points you would like to communicate to an audience about a theory, method, concept, idea or issue.
2. Choose a topic other than your own (from question 1), and brainstorm an open-ended discussible question that you could ask the audience to discuss in pairs for 2-3 minutes.
3. Choose a different topic (from question 1) other than your own, and brainstorm an activity, experiment, exercise, you could ask two people to perform in pairs (and the results shared with another pair in front or behind them). e.g. draw something, act something out, observe a set of actions.
4. Design an interesting way that a large number of ideas could be collected from an audience and recorded and displayed for all to see.
5. Thinking about all the Multiple Intelligences, brainstorm an idea for an audience participation activity that could tap into two or more of the different learning types. Bodily-kinesthetic. Interpersonal. Verbal-linguistic. Logical-mathematical. Naturalistic. Intrapersonal. Visual-spatial. Musical.
6. Describe a method you could use to get an audience to find the patterns in some data collection activity e.g. the colour of people's eyes, favourite pastime, most dangerous experience.
7. Describe an amazing activity you could design which gets the whole of your audience on its' feet at the end of your "interactive lecture" that resonates with your big idea. e.g. a Gregorian chant of slogans for next year.
8. Imagine yourself as an Interactor. Describe how you might deliver a 30-minute "interactive lecture" in which you have three activities interspersed through the process that engage your audience interactively, perhaps with a resounding finale.

Sitting still and being quiet

2009-08-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

They were a bunch of kids from a school on the outskirts of London. They were "disruptive", "difficult", "disengaged", "problem" children. Some were on the verge of being expelled.

This was their last chance. And it was my first and last chance too. The big test was to see whether a collaborative, interactive, conversational approach to learning would make any difference.

The electronic meeting room was set-up in a large hall. Down one end. The teachers observed from a respectable distance so the students would not feel intimidated. A dozen keyboards were connected to a laptop. The image was projected on a large screen. The tables and chairs were arranged in clumps, so people could talk/discuss/argue/think together in groups of 5-6. Nothing like the traditional classroom where students sit alone and in rows, facing the front, so they can't talk to each other

I explained what we were about to do and asked for a volunteer facilitator, to take over my role half way through the session. But only if they thought they could do it AND it was worth doing.

The session began with some fun questions to establish the Talk-Type-Read-Review etiquette, which helps quickly orchestrate/organize a group. This was followed by a seven question workshop about personal goals, and a similar length workshop about how to deal with bullying, and finally a feedback session. In just one hour.

Two students volunteered to facilitate. One was chosen and conducted the remainder of the session with minimal assistance.

It soon became clear why this group was in trouble. When asked "what's the nicest thing that's ever happened to you?" it was a chorus of kinesthetic learners whose voices I clearly heard. "When I signed my first contract at [name deleted] athletic", "I scored the winning goal", "won the really good cup for the football team", "scored a hat-trick", "I scored the winning penalty....and broke my shoulder", "when I scored the winning goal in netball" and "riding a scrambler bike".

School for these kids was like a prison sentence. Twelve years of sitting perfectly and silently still in class. Unable to converse with each other or do stuff. This brief experience with an interactive technology was probably their first and last. It was for them, a glimmer of hope that the mind-numbing and body-numbing experience we call school could perhaps one day be different.

At the end of the session this was what the students had to say about our collective performance, warts and all:

Pluses

* I think that positive things have come out of this whole trial. We can see other peoples feelings without maybe embarrassing them if they had to speak their feelings.
* It was all good because it is an interesting way of learning, it was very modern and would help keep interest and also gelp people from getting distracted.
* The + were we got to use great technology this is fantastic all the equiipment we ggot to use. _ were missing English my favourite subject.
* I have learnt about other peoples feelings and emotions
* It is a different way of learning so keeps us more occupied.
* It is good to see everyones point of views.
* People who are quiet could also have a chance to be heard if they didn't have the confidence to speak in front of everyone.
* You don't have to write and you show and say your ideas without having to acually put your hand up and say infront of everybody
* The pluses of this session was we learnt how to use some new technology and we can see what other people feel when they are being bullied or if someone else is being bullied.

Minuses

* None
* Some people didn't take it seriously and think that its funny to display immature messages.
* I think that it was all good.
* It would be very confusing at first but you soon get the hang of it. It takes a long time to do very few questions,
* Some people might of been silly about their answers
* Ermmm...nothin was wrong with this apart from we missed a valuable english lesson
* Its brilliant nothing wrong with this
* It was all fine not to hard or easy just rite a good class

Points of interest

* The whole thing the program was great and I think it is great that the oldest person you have working for you is 21.
* I learnt how to use this package which I thought was very fascinating and glad that I have come here this afternoon, its been great thank you very much.
* I learned that learning could be enjoyable!
* I thought that this was was a really good experience trying something different
* I thought the whole idea was very interesting and a fun way of learning. i learnt other people point of veiws instead of just my own or [another student's name deleted], that was interesting to see what other people think.
* It was really interestin the way you could type somethin from over here and endin up on a screen over there. this use of technology would be brilliant in our school. would be interesting to see if it boosts up teachers and students grades
* Finding out what other people think about points an ideas '
* A new way how to talk without looking or feeing embarassed of your opinion

So what would school be like if we all asked our students what they like or don't like about their lessons? What if we listened to what students have to say and changed some of the ways we teach?

Here's a workshop for students to give us feedback:

1. What do you think hinders your learning?
2. What do you think helps your learning?
3. How do you learn best? What kinds of activities/experiences excite and interest you?
4. What bores you the most?
5. What could teachers do to make learning more interesting for you?
6. If you could learn about anything you wanted to what would that be?
7. If you had more responsibility for your own learning what would you do?

The wise application of knowledge

2009-08-11T02:23:00.001-07:00

Futurist John Naisbett famously said in his 1981 book Megatrends, "We are drowning in information but starved of knowledge". But at the start of the 21st century, he might just as well have said, we are drowning in knowledge but unable to apply/use it wisely.

Wisdom workers have been around forever. Tribal elders. Religious leaders. Politicians. Captains of industry. Pillars of the community. Their job is to make the best possible use of our knowledge, to help us survive as a species, to live a better life, to live more lightly on the planet.

The knowledge and wisdom industry combined is huge. Each year about 1.4-1.5 million peer reviewed scholarly articles are published in 24,000 academic journals. Some 2-3 per cent of people have a doctor in front of their names. Two percent of people work as teachers, lecturers or trainers. Wisdom workers in the form of leaders of all kinds comprise another 2-3 percent of all workers.

Yet despite this huge massive effort we still have many unsolved wicked problems that never seem to go away. Poverty. Famine. Disease. Environmental degradation. Crime. Chronic unemployment. Species loss. Just to name a few.

Maybe it's time for all of us to play a role. One possibility is to think about wisdom in the same way that a computer programmer does and become our own determiners of what is wise. Wisdom is at the pinnacle of the data hierarchy. Activity. Data. Information. Knowledge. Wisdom.

At the base of the wisdom-data hierarchy is Activity. Activity is simply events. Physical events such as the earth revolving around the sun, water freezing as ice or an apple falling off a tree and striking the ground. Chemical events such as a fire burning or steel rusting. Geological events such as earthquakes and volcanos. Biological events such as the flowering of plants, sex or consuming other species. Social events such as a conversation, party, meeting or war.

The process of collecting data requires some kind of measuring device. Observation by our senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Or a ruler. Measuring tape. Microscope, Telescope. Beaker. Balance beam. Spectrometer. Or gamma ray detector.

Here's how it works. Consider this image. Some parts are colored black, some deep blue, other parts are white and some are brown. That's all data is. Pixels, symbols, numbers, letters or words wthout any meaning.

It's only when we analyze what we see, usually through a theoretical lens, that we can decide what the data means. This generates a kind of smarter data we call information....perhaps the white fluffy swirls in the picture are clouds, the red patches are deserts, and the circular rim is the boundary between the earth and the rest of the universe. Or if we suspect it's a picture of a beach ball, the patches of color are just the designer's imagination run wild, and the circular boundary is the limit to the ball.

Next, we use the information we have collected to create knowledge. We make judgments about whether the data represents a picture of a ball, a planet or some other other object. Knowledge is merely our collective best guess. Its' often represented as a diagram, a model, an equation, a graph, a list, a process, or a statement about relationships between the subject of our study and its component parts.

We can process our best guesses even further, and choose how to apply the knowledge with wisdom. For example, we could use the knowledge acquired by analyzing the magnificent image of earth photographed from space, combined with other kinds of knowledge about our planet, to work out how we might more wisely live on space-ship earth or be more compassionate about our fellow travelers.

Here is a workshop so anyone can learn how to convert data into information, information into knowledge and begin to apply it wisely:

1. Activity – What is our field of our study? What kind of events/objects are we observing? What observation method/tool are we using?
2. Data – What can we see/observe or measure? e.g. color, shapes
3. Information – What could be the meaning of what we observe/measure? e.g. brown parts might be earth/deserts
4. Knowledge – What are the patterns, if any, in our interpretation of the information? What is our hypothesis or best guess about what we observe?
5. Wisdom - How could we learn from this? How could we apply our knowledge wisely to benefit not just ourselves but all others?

Learning as a game

2009-08-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

Imagine for a moment a computer game based on traditional classroom methods, the lecture, the closed question, worked examples, tests, and learning alone with little or no interaction with your peers. How many kids would play such a game?

Computer gaming has become extremely popular with “children” of all ages. It has proven so engaging that the design principles are now being adapted for learning technologies to attract students who are bored by conventional classes.

So what are the game design principles we can apply to learning?

Malone & Lepper suggest seven intrinsic motivators. Think of them as design rules. The "learning game" should immerse the player in some kind of fantasy world. It should appeal to their curiosity about what comes next. The task should be challenging, but not so hard that the learners switch off. You should feel in control of your destiny. There should be some kind of competition/engagement with another player, but at the same time some kind of co-operation with others, and finally you need to receive rewards or recognition as you progress.

The rules for "learning games" have their origins in Flow theory which shows that enjoyment is the main reason people play games.

Flow theory is the brainchild of psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. He found that when people engage in activities they enjoy like chess, rock climbing, rock dancing, skiing, brain surgery, computer games or making love they so lose themselves in the experience that time seems to pass in a moment.

Learning games work best if they quickly attract and keep a player’s attention for hours, and then progressively increase the player’s perceptual, cognitive and memory workload.

They become enjoyable when they are challenging so players want to keep playing and achieving. However, the tasks should not be so challenging the game far exceeds a player’s ability that they become anxious or be too easy so the game is boring and not worth doing. Because Flow is a moment-to-moment experience, an overly difficult or irrelevant task can change the mood and level of engagement.

The learning game should progress. As a player masters one level, more complex and difficult tasks remain. Players should learn as they play, receive rewards for making progress and, if they get into serious difficulties, receive hints or be able to read a simple on-line manual. Ideally, the cues should be present in the game.

Our research shows that sequences of open-ended discussible rich questions, with self-contained prompts and check lists, perform much the same function as a game.

The questions help the learner recall what they already know or could know in an interesting way, then build progressively on this foundation. The prompts/check lists remind the brain where to look for associated concepts. Along the way, there should be interesting/surprising twists. Some questions should include/anticipate the responses from earlier questions, to give small intrinsic rewards.

Here's an example from Knowing Knowledge, a workshop-based Theory of Knowledge course for the International Baccalaureate:

1. Brainstorm a list of all the different kinds of arts. e.g., theatre, novels....
2. Choose two of these art forms with which you are familiar, and describe what you like about each one. Ballet, rock music, jazz, opera, poem, movie, paintings, novels, sculpture, photographs, comics, cartoons.
3. Explain what might be artistic about Cage’s musical composition 4’33”, which is four and a half minutes of silence.
4. Explain what might be artistic about Andy Warhol’s painting of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup.
5. How might science fiction contribute value to people’s lives?
6. How might public buildings, architecture, parks and gardens e.g. monuments, obelisks etc. be considered artistic and contribute to our lives?
7. Explain how the photograph of a shantytown, ballroom dancing, a bird song, a newspaper advertisement, the design of a chair, a watch or a household appliance might be artistic,
8. Can anything be artistic? Where does artistic begin and end? Explain.
9. Do all artistic things have to have meaning? Give your reasons.
10. When people say, "art is in the eye of the beholder” what do they mean?
11. Oscar Wilde once said, “All art is useless.” What could he have meant?
12. If something is meaningless, can it be art/artistic? For example, are paintings by monkeys and elephants artistic? Give your reasons.
13. When people explain/interpret a work of art, what happens to the work of art if people say good things or bad things about it?
14. Who decides whether a work (music, theatre, film, novel, website) has value/meaning and what kind of process do they go through to make these decisions?
15. In what ways might different cultures decide whether a work of art is valuable? Explain Umberto Eco’s idea that advertising a Mercedes Benz in New York might lead a handful of people to buy one, and more people to go out and trash one.
16. Can crafts be considered artistic, or is there a dividing line between the arts and applied arts?
17. How do the arts play a role in people’s lives? In what ways might the arts be a form of knowledge?
18. Give an example, (name of the work if possible), of each of the following art forms that you have seen/experienced and how each made you feel. Ballet, rock music, jazz, opera, poem, movie, paintings, novels, sculpture, photographs, comics, cartoons. Respond like this: Father of the Bride, amused; ........
19. Give examples of how experiencing artistic works expands the way we think.
20. What are the characteristics/features that different kinds of arts have in common?
21. Brainstorm a list of things that your consider to be beautiful?
22. What do beautiful things have in common? e.g. colours that...
23. Here is a list of different aspects of beautiful things. Choose one or two and explain why they are beautiful? Repeating patterns. Harmonies in music. Rhythm in dance. The intensity of jungle drums. The symmetry of a circle or square. Curves that have an interesting shape. Shapes or colours that mimic nature. Art that exaggerates or makes more real.
24. Explain the difference between the ordinaryness of everyday life and the form (shapes, patterns, colours, sounds etc.) found in artistic works?

Malone, T.W., & Lepper, M.R. (1987). Making learning fun: A taxonomy of intrinsic motivations for learning. In R. Snow & M. Farr (Eds.), Aptitude, Learning, and Instruction: Cognitive and Affective Process Analyses. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis

2009-08-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

Students who undertake the Theory of Knowledge Course for the International Baccalaureate, the ultimate in secondary education, are required to prepare and submit an essay that argues the pros and cons of a contemporary issue such as climate change, intelligent design or whether "all art is useless".

The students explore how "we know what we know" through the lens of the natural and human sciences, arts and languages. They examine the role that reason, perception, emotion and ethics play in the creation and application of knowledge.

The course acknowledges that knowledge creation is a collective process. The students are encouraged to discuss and debate the topic from a myriad of perspectives. But not so the essay. It's an individual work judged on a personal performance.

But what if the essay writing component could have a collaborative element that "walks the talk"? Each student would choose a topic. Then they would work as a team to help scope out each other's essays, in much the same way a teacher might provide assistance. They would collectively explore the possibilities. Develop a framework. Construct an argument. Reach a tentative conclusion. And get a head start. Not only for their essay, but for life in the real world, where leaders in business and government need to be able to create new knowledge together.

Each student would then fly solo. They would do the hard part themselves; the literature review, write up the arguments, reach their own conclusions, and dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s. It would be all their own work.

This is an approach I like to adopt in my own research but prefer to go even further. I choose to write papers for conferences and academic journals with colleagues because when we do, like Vygotsky's children in collective play, we "perform as if we were a head taller."

So here is a workshop method to implement this idea. It is as old as Socrates. You begin with the thesis (one side of the argument), develop an antithesis (the other sides of the argument) and resolve them into a synthesis (an overarching new and better solution) which hopefully resolves the conflict.

You can also use the method to analyze any issue in the broader world of business, politics, religion and community.

1. Who are the main protagonists in this argument? Names, titles, organisations.....
2. What are the main arguments put forward by the protagonists?
3. What interests do each of the protagononists represent, what biases may they bring to the discussion, and what are they trying to achieve by participating in the debate/discussion?
4. For each of the arguments that each of the protagonists, put forward what kinds of knowledge (reason, intuition, gossip, deductive reasoning, abductive reasoning) and what support is there for that knowledge (documents, independent research, paid research, hearsay).
5. On what issues do the protagonists agree, and for which there is no dispute?
6. On what issues to the protagonists disagree, and why is there a dispute?
7. Considering all of the sources, their reliability, and the biases/interests of the protagonists, what would you conclude (and why), if your were a disinterested observer?
8. How can we be sure this is a real problem? Is it merely an isolated localisated disagreement or an issue with much broader consequences? Give your reasons.
9. What biases do you bring to the issue that you need to make public and discount?
10. What possibilities are there for the two different positions to be reconciled by abductive reasoning (using a new metaphor) that allows you to create an overarching solution which is consistent with all of the information/data/knowledge upon which the protagonists rely?
11. Why might the protagonists reject the “third way” that you have developed?
12. How can you improve/enhance the proposed solution so that it better meets the needs and interests of all the parties?
13. What might be the benefits/advantages of the protagonists embracing the “third way” that you have develeped which is more consistent with the sources.
14. What are the consequences of the status quo/doing nothing.

Learning via immersion

2009-07-31T20:01:00.000-07:00

Much is made of the human capacity to plan/think ahead. This ability to time travel began with the invention of writing to keep records or prepare plans.

But there is a limit to our imagination. As many developers of new technologies will explain, its often hard to know how people will use a "new-to-the-world" product/service until it exists and you can play with it.

The same can be said of the rules of complex systems. It is not until you immerse yourself in a culture/system/world/activity with which you are unfamiliar, that you can really grow to understand it. Like stepping into the world of thinking/acting like a mathematician, scientist and technician.

We apply the principal of learning via immersion when we play a series of quasi-maths games to help students discover how to think like a mathematician.

We begin by asking them to list the rules for judging the winner of this game:

"Complete the series A1, B2, C3......Z26"

As soon as the students have experienced the game they can "see" the rules immediately, including quite complex variations. A task that was previously beyond them.

It's the power of our right frontal lobes to help us survive novel, dangerous situations, and which formulate possible solution. Here's a typical set of responses:

The rules for judging the winner of the game are: all the numbers from 1 to 26 and letters from a to z must correspond, capital letter only, no missing/extra letters or numbers (should not end in 25/27), no spaces, separated by commas, no spaces between the numbers and the letters.

And if you ask the students to play the next game they quickly improve their performance as well:

Complete the series, AZ, BY, CX.......ZA,

It's just like the underlying rules/standards of algebra, geometry and arithmetic that mathematicians use all the time. You know you are more likely to have a promising solution, if after applying Occam's Razor, the solution is:

* The simplest.
* The most complete.
* Unique.
* Unambiguous.
* Contains no errors.

So, when you are designing a learning activity, it's a good idea to immerse the learners in the activity, and have them discover the rules, theory or model for themselves and perfect/correct it, because when they derive it themselves they will be more likely to remember it. Here's an example. You don't have to complete all the questions...just the most relevant:

1. Go to www.worldtime.com. Look at this simulation where the sun is shining on earth. Explain what you see, why some part of the earth is in sunshine, some in darkness and some in twilight. Also explain why one of the poles is in sunlight and the other in darkness.
2. After everyone has responded, print out a copy for everyone. Then respond to these questions
3. In what ways, if any, could we make this simpler? Small, concise, tidy, looks good
4. What do we need to do to make sure this is unambiguous/exact?
5. In what ways, if any, could we make more logical? Follows what has gone before, is the next step.
6. What do we need to do, if anything, to ensure it is reliable/correct? We will get the same outcome no matter who performs the process.
7. What do we need to do, if anything, to make sure it is complete? Is everything included?
8. Write a new description that explains what is happening in the www.worldtime.com model.

Co-performance and co-visualization

2009-07-31T19:40:00.000-07:00

Top athletes use visualization to improve their personal performances. To ski down hill like a champion. To jump higher than ever before. To swim the fastest race.

They imagine themselves winning. They practice their "moves" in minute detail, step-by-step, in real time, in amazing detail, in glorious color and with a soundtrack to boot.

What if we could use these same techniques to improve everyday joint performances? And go beyond a personal achievement.

What if we could help teachers become brilliant provocateurs, challengers and inspirers and at the same time as their students practice new roles as fabulous conversationalists, writers, pattern detectors and knowledge creators?

What if we could transform all kinds of relationships by co-visualizing co-performances for couples, families, community groups, business and sports teams?

So instead of daydreaming/watching television or just being bored, we use quiet moments together to create vivid mental pictures of doing stuff together, and "exercise" pretty much the same muscles as if we were performing the action in real time.

So here's a series of questions to start thinking about the concept of co-visualization.

1. What did you first see when you woke up this morning? OR Picture what you might have for lunch today?
2. Turn to your partner and recall a most remarkable, amazing, wonderful or happy event in your life. Visualize that moment. Then describe, step by step, what happened, what you saw and heard.
3. Imagine yourself as a tight rope walker. Describe in detail what you do, how you begin, how place your feet, balance yourself, and walk along the wire, and how you feel when you reached the end of the wire. What happened? Describe what you saw in as much detail as possible.
4a. For the teacher. Pick a topic. Imagine yourself as an inspirational teacher, somewhat Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society. You get the very best from your students. You organize great conversations. You ask rich, amazing questions that guide the students through a thinking process. That keep them engaged for ages. Make a list of all the steps in the performance.
4b. For the student. Pick the same topic as your teacher. Imagine yourself engaged in conversation with other students, generating possibilities, discussing the alternatives, and giving reasons for your suggested solution. Make a list of all the steps in the performance.
6. What helped you to improve your visualization performances?
7. Make a checklist of 5-10 rules for co-visualizing your performance.
8. Choose a new activity to visualize and use the checklist to improve your performance.

Stop press: Watch this space for a series of workshops from Marie Dalloway in Phoenix, Arizona to help you practice and develop co-visualization skills.

Super-sized meals and kids

2009-07-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

The surest way to live a long life, except for accidents, is to eat less and exercise more. But many of today's young people don't even know the difference between healthy/unhealthy foods or what kind of exercise works best.

And when you grow up in a culture that super-sizes meals of every kind it's a bit hard to know what to eat and what portions are appropriate.

This week a colleague pointed me to a newspaper article, where Arizona Schools Superintendent Tom Horne, was urging teachers to help teenagers learn the difference between apples and fries and which kinds of activities keep you aerobically fit.

I have to be careful what I eat. Traveling as much as I do, take-out and hotel meals are unavoidable. In the USA especially, it is almost impossible to be served smaller portions because the norm is:

* huge size servings, enough for two and sometimes three people.
* hidden sugars and fats in breads, biscuits, juices and soda drinks
* fries with everything
* salads awash in fatty dressings, and.
* giant sandwiches with super large servings of meats and cheeses.

The best way to kill yourself early is to eat lots of the foods that contain these fats and clog up your blood vessels, or consume sugar which is converted into fats and is stored, usually around the torso....just in case of winter or famine.

So here's the kind of conversation that young people need to have to change the way they think/feel about food and activity....

1. The size of servings in America are much larger than the size of servings elsewhere in the world. Knowing this, what could you do to reduce the amount you eat to just what you need?
2. Growing kids/teenage girls/most men/active women should consider at least four serves of vegetables and three of fruit each day. Teenage boys/active men should consider five serves of vegetables and four of fruit. Design an interesting vegetable salad combining 4-5 serves (cupfuls) of vegetables, e.g. tomatoes, asparagus and beetroot, that would be a taste temptation. Include some herbs perhaps like mint and coriander.
3. Design a delicious fruit salad in unusual combinations of the 3-4 servings of fruit e.g. oranges, blueberries and mango, that you would love to eat each day...the ones that you really like.
4. Thinking about the sugar in soft drinks and juices, imagine the sugar being converted by your body to fat and going straight to your waist, bum or thighs. What could you do to reduce the amount of sugar you consume via drinks?
5. Twenty to thirty minutes of exercise at the start of every day that raises the heart beat can help you stay fit and feel really alive. What kind of exercise do you like that you can reliably do every day?
6. Think of a fatty/greasy food that is solid at room temperature. Write a story about how fat or sugar in foods gets into your body and clogs up your arteries and kills you earlier than you'd like.
7. Choose an activity from this list and envision/describe yourself doing it and feeling good afterward. Where, how, with whom? Walk, run, swim, dance, skip rope, climb stairs, gym, weights...or add your own...remember it has to raise your heart beat. Note: Finger puppets do not count.
8. Create/invent/describe your own playground version of a reality TV/computer game you could play with your friends to discover hide/find stuff out in the playground/yard/neighborhood....that involves a mix of brain power and physical activity. And get extra points for more exertion?
9. Brainstorm a short story/mantra you could tell yourself so you say NO to foods containing lots of fat and sugar.
10. Imagine carrying around an extra 10 large bottles of soda every day. That's about 10 kilos or 14 pounds (one stone). Write a paragraph or two about the unnecessary effort required to carry around the extra weight.

To help kids explore the issues of growing up there's a Zing collaborative title Relating Well with 100 workshops just like this. See:

www.relatingwell.co.uk

A new kind of man

2009-07-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why your plumber, roofer, motor car mechanic, machinist or electrician has suddenly become the new rich?

It's not because boys don't want to do these newly reinvented, more complex jobs, it's because many of them can't. It's mostly boys who are ending up in the unemployable queue, who once upon a time could fool around at school, and get a job in their mid-20s that employed their physical abilities - laborer, farm-hand or truck driver.

These labor intensive, low brain-power jobs are becoming scarce.

The time has come to reinvent how we think about men, and what we expect them to be. No more competitive, ego-centric, comfort-seeking, super-sexualized, predators concerned with social status, that drop out of school. Not merely a uni-dimensional Jock.

More an improvement/enhancement to the current styles, Jock, Military man, Sportsman, College Joe, Rebel, Cowboy, Hunter, Joe College, Sportsman, Businessman, Man About Town, Dandy and Nerd. More able to empathize with others, work in a team, lead others, use technology and solve problems. More responsible. More robust. More assured of themselves, but with a greater degree of humility.

In some industries there are looming shortages of skills, which are driving up the cost of services....think plumbing and electrical work around your home or someone to fix your car's computer. Shortages of some highly skilled workers are limiting big corporation's abilities to transform themselves, to make use of new flexible systems, or install or maintain sophisticated systems.

What used to be skilled trades are demanding ever higher literacy, numeracy and computer skills. No more mindlessly performing a narrowly designed/defined job on a production line. The machinist who makes parts for jet aircraft or makes molds for plastic parts, or machines components for engines has to use brain power as well as brawn to do his work.

With each wave of societal change, not only have we automated the work of the earlier techno-cultural periods, but with each successive wave, the new tools we create have a multiplier effect back through the system.

In the current shift from the Information Age to the Knowledge Age, new tools are being invented that transform highly physical Hunter-gatherer, Agriculture and Industrial age jobs into brawn+brain jobs. The few remaining original jobs that require heavy lifting only, are being driven, little by little, to extinction.

So, as teachers of these young people, here's a workshop to explore how we can change the way we think about and engage with young men, so we guide them to prepare for more complex ways of working:

1. Brainstorm a list of the attributes of tomorrow's man, the kind of young man who is able to participate fully and responsibly in society
2. Who are the role models for this new kind of man, and how can they exert a powerful influence over him and the worlds in which he moves?
3. What do we have to do to ensure that we create learning environments in which this new kind of young man will not only survive, but also thrive?
4. What should we do, so that people with whom this new kind of man interacts, positively reinforce his new image of himself?
5. What new kinds of support structures in the family, home and community do we need need to create that can encourage this new kind of man?

What young people want from school

2009-07-06T06:58:00.000-07:00

There has been a switch in emphasis in recent years to schools asking their students what they like/don't like about school, their lessons and their teachers.

The answers are universally the same. Focus groups on four continents show children are generally bored by their teachers’ lectures and are fearful of closed questions because they are used as a behavior control method. They especially loathe sarcasm and put downs. They regard copying from the blackboard or making notes from lectures as time wasting. They would much prefer to have discussions, use technology and engage in hands-on activities.

Most want to go to school. It's important for their social life. Its a place to do what human's do really well...interact, converse and play together. So the idea of no-school or home school for many is a non-starter.

But sadly not all schools are listening to their "student voices". What began as laws in 1844 to provide British children working in mines and factories with some education and which was made mandatory in 1890 and free in 1891 for 5 to 12 year olds has become a millstone around their necks. The laws which govern education historically put power in the hands of teachers, parents and administrators rather than students.

On the other hand, marketers see children as knowledgeable and capable of making their own decisions about who they are through what they buy, making choices or being influencers from an early age for both family and personal purchases of food, books, clothes, entertainment and sophisticated technologies such as computers. They learn brand loyalty before they can read and make specific requests for brand name products. By age eight, children have acquired the necessary skills from parents, peers and TV to become independent consumers, have their own money to spend and have a say in the purchase of household items. Many cook for themselves, buy food for their families or participate in family shopping.

This is the most technology and information savvy generation ever. Most are plugged directly into the giant newsroom, library, supermarket and entertainment center the web has become. Many have their own mobile phones, televisions, computers and even their own debit cards.

So what do they want? Most students said they would like school to be more “fun” or "fun, fun, fun" and have access to “more technology” more often. Students said they use computers “at home lots” and “at school never” or "rarely" and would like this to change. They want more “interesting teachers”, to “sit where you want” and more “class discussions” so that “everyone is involved” resulting in “better relationships with other people". Schools should “make the classes more interactive” and employ “better teacher techniques” to suit “different types of learners". "Smaller classes" would ensure people were “more comfortable and confident to say what they want within reason". Students should be allowed “to take more control over their own learning” and “have their own opinions” even if their teachers do not agree with them.#

So, what if we regard the learner as our customer? What if we acknowledge that many children know what they want but are afraid to give voice to their opinions? Here's a "student voice" workshop to start the process:

1. What do you like about your lessons?
2. What could be improved about your lessons?
3. Describe the most boring lesson you have ever had. What happened?
4. Describe the most exciting lesson you have ever had. What happened?
5. Which of these learning activities do your really like and why? Problem solving, teamwork, using technology, internet research, library research, discussion, making things, answering the teachers questions, listening to the teacher, copying from the blackboard, text book exercises.
6. Which of these learning activities do your really dislike and why? Problem solving, teamwork, using technology, internet research, library research, discussion, making things, answering the teachers' questions, listening to the teacher, copying from the blackboard, text book exercises.
7. What are the rules for your classroom? What is expected of you?
8. If you could invent some new rules for your classroom what would they be?
9. What does your teacher do to teach you? e.g. ask you questions.
10. If you could change the way school is organized what would you do?
11. In what ways is your home life different from your school life?
12. What kinds of tools/things do you use at school as part of your learning e.g. books, computers and how do you use them?
13. What kinds of tools/things do you use at home as part of your life e.g. books, computers and how do you use them?
14. How much opportunity is there in school to use the tools that you use in your home life? e.g. phone, computer, internet, chat rooms etc.
15. Describe some ways that you might use some of these tools in how you learn within the school?
16. How much time do you spend at school using computers in your learning and how much time at home?
17. What is your preferred way of learning and why?
18. What way of learning do you least prefer and why?
19. Describe the kinds of activities in which you feel really excited and engaged, so that time passes quickly.
20. What are your hobbies, sports, interests?
21. What do you do really well?
22. What kind of career do you think you will pursue?

# Findlay, J., Fitzgerald, R.N. & Hobby, R. (2004). Learners as customers. Proceedings of the International Conference on Educational Technology (ICET), Singapore, September 9-10, 2004.

The power of rich questions

2009-07-03T15:57:00.000-07:00

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are two pictures created using social network analysis software that illustrate the differences between two types of conversation.

The charts represent the conversations between students in a classroom in response to closed and open-ended questions. The red dots represent the students, Jane, Tom, Dick, Harry etc. and the blue dots are their responses, numbers 1,2,3...etc.

The first image is the students' response to a closed question such as "What color is the sky?" It shows how the conversation comes to an abrupt halt. One main idea. Once said, there is nothing more to say.

The second image is the student's response to an open-ended discussable question/task, such as "Thinking about all the different emotions you feel, e.g. fear, sadness, happiness, etc. how do they impact on what you do/how you respond to these situations?" It shows a conversation that develops, and generates an explosion of ideas. And someone who had nothing to say.

The questions that generate the richest conversations catalyze reminders to related concepts, which belong in families which Ludwig Wittgenstein called "language games".

For example, when we are asked to think about a motor car engine, we might recall piston, crankshaft, valves, petrol, lubricating oil, water to cool the engine exhaust etc. When we are asked to think about emotions we might recall anger, fear, sadness, happiness etc. Sometimes, the questions are so rich and powerful, they help us create/represent knowledge about how the concepts connect/relate to each other.

It is our ability to ask these kinds of questions, that help us become capable "knowledge workers", to work with others to create new knowledge from our observations of what is happening in the world that we may not have experienced or noticed before. We could of course, use Blooms Taxonomy, to help us think about the different kinds of questions/thinking operations we could use. You might also consult Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blooms_taxonomy.

So here's a method to craft fantastic question sequences/thinking methods:

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/relationships between concepts we would like the learner to discover.
5. Make a list of all the ideas/concepts/relationships between concepts 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 follows the pathway? Start with the tacit knowledge/prior knowledge/a simple experiment and end up a question for creating a model, proposing a theory, reaching a decision, devising an action plan etc.

No right or wrong answers, just better

2009-07-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

What if there were no right or wrong answers in maths? What if we learned maths like we learn life? Just better guesses, or closer approximations to the "truth".

Here's an approach to learning that turns students into investigators/good guessers and makes them more responsible for their own learning, in the same way that workers on the factory floor in many industries are now responsible for their own productivity/quality improvements.

It's an approach that has helped the Japanese motor car and electronics industries become extraordinarily successful. But they had a lot of help from a mentor, Edwards Demming, one of the father's of the quality movement around the world. He was more famous in Japan, where his methods were adopted, than America, where he lived.

He developed methods for the collection and statistical analysis of manufacturing and process errors to improve product and service quality. But his most important new idea was to give the workers responsibility for finding errors and working out what to do, rather than management going around with a stop watch or micrometer and apportioning blame.

We first tried this error detection method in the late 1990s with a group of 12 secondary school students in years 7 through 10 who had a shaky knowledge of multiplication tables. They used a team learning system to collect their responses anonymously (they could not see each others' contributions) to 100 multiplication problems e.g. What's 5 x 9?

When the contributions were revealed, the students looked for patterns of errors, brainstormed ideas for eliminating them and applied their ideas to new problems.

They noticed that most errors occurred with 7x, 8x, 9x, and 12x tables, and generally with the higher numbers in these series. They also realized that difficult to remember multiplication tables could often be inferred from a lower (or higher) table that was easier to remember, for example 9 x 10 is easy to remember, but 9 x 9 = 81 is difficult. So start with 90 and subtract 9.

They shared techniques they had learned individually. For example, add a zero to a number to multiplying by 10, e.g. 8 x 10 = 80. To calculate numbers multiplied by 11, repeat the number, e.g. 9 x 11 = 99, at least up to 9. They also trialed a method to become familiar with the numbers in each multiplication table, by completing both ascending and descending series, for example 7, 14, 21 etc. and 99, 96, 93, etc.

At the start of the four session trial the error rate was 37.5% and at the end 7.5%.

So here's the method:

7 x 7
8 x 3
9 x 2
6 x 4
...more tasks
8 x 8
12 x 11
5 x 9
Thinking about our performance, where did we perform well?
Thinking about our performance, where did we make most of our mistakes?
What happens in your mind when you get it right? What do you feel?
What happens in your mind when you are having difficulties? What do you feel?
Describe a trick/technique you use to remember?
How could we improve our performance?
Apply new rules to: 10 x 10
6 x 3
12 x 6
7 x 9
12 x 8
....more tasks...

Paying teachers to be innovators

2009-07-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

It was the 1960s. The inspectors expected us to teach to the curriculum and to employ a modest range of acceptable pedagogical methods. That's the aspect of maths teaching I now regard as worrisome. On the other hand, Martin, our maths coordinator encouraged us to be inventive. That's the aspect of teaching of which I am proud.

One of my classes was Year 9, the testosterone years. They were the weakest group and had a maths age of about Grade 2. There was absolutely no point adding to their confusion by filling them up with abstract algebra and geometry, which demanded a solid foundation.

I discovered that most of my students did not understand the concept of numbers, let alone more complicated mathematical ideas. I remembered my automatic knowledge of basic arithmetic was learned by playing cards from about the age of two with my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents.

So we trialed snap, poker, twenty-one, gin rummy and euchre. They quickly caught on and learned a a whole bunch of other mathematical ideas such as sets (Spades, Clubs, Hearts and Diamonds), series (1,2,3. etc.), variables (wild cards which can be another card) and probability, such as turning up a specific card (1 chance in 52 less the number of cards dealt). And they had a lot of fun!

Since then I have had the pleasure to work with Ian, a brilliant maths teacher at a secondary school in the North of England. He routinely asks his students to scour the web and find fun simulations and images around which they can design and facilitate their own learning activities. It takes just one year for the students to learn to think and work like mathematicians, by discussing the meaning of mathematical concepts, and exploring how they can be applied to real world situations. In the maths class, they stay on task for hours, help/lead/coach each other and are confident, because they learn about/discover how they learn. When they go to other classes, they return to being feral.

So teachers, let's innovate, with the help of the customer. Let try new tools/methods/approaches in the classroom and encourage students to do the same, and in the process devise new ways of learning. And for both students and teachers to be researchers, to establish which methods work best. And why not pay teachers to be innovators, so that's what we focus on? Constant improvement!

So here's a workshop to conduct with students on pedagogical innovation:

1. Brainstorm a list of tools/technologies/methods that we do not currently use in the classroom, and why we you don't use them e.g. twitter....
2. Choose one of the list of tools/technologies/methods you currently do not use in the classroom and explain how you could use it for a highly engaging/interesting learning activity.
3. How could student become the designers and facilitators of their own learning activities? Give some examples of things to do.
4. How could students measure/evaluate new teaching/learning methods so they have greater responsibility for their own learning performance improvement? Give examples of things to do.
5. Devise a scheme that pays teachers to be innovators, and constantly improve learning performance, student engagement and enjoyment.

We are the children of the stars

2009-07-01T04:50:00.000-07:00

Darryl Reanney, philosopher, scientist and author of the book "The Death of Forever", once observed that "we are the children of the stars".

It is an interesting slant on a big scientific idea, that helps us to discuss the subject in a very direct, personal and meaningful way.

When we look up at the night sky, we are observing our ancestry. The heavier atoms such as oxygen and iron from which our bodies are made, were forged in the furnaces of the stars, fused from the simpler elements of hydrogen and helium during the collapse of stars nearing the end of their lives, and then blasted into space. The dust from these gigantic galactic explosions, or supernovae, coalesced to form new stars and planets, and ultimately us.

On our own planet earth, these heavy elements are the foundation for life as we know it. The water in our bodies, the air we breathe, the iron to make haemaglobin which gives our blood the red color and transports oxygen around, the steel for knives and forks, houses, skyscrapers, cars or railway lines, which are the tools of our creation. A 14,000 million year journey.

So here's some questions for you and your science/philosophy students to consider:

1. When you look up at the night sky and see all the stars, what amazes you?
2. If light from the furthest part of the observable universe has taken 14,000 million years to reach us, what does this say about a human lifetime of 70-80 years, and our place in the universe?
3. Thinking about the idea that "we are the children of the stars" describe your ancestry over the past 14,000 million years.
4. Imagine you are an atom of oxygen(O), forged in a star 10,000 million years ago, that is now part of a water molecule (H20) in your body. Describe your journey...

Becoming a great facilitator

2009-06-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

Remember Robin Williams, the teacher in the movie Dead Poets' Society. How he inspired, entertained, provoked, challenged and won the respect of his students? Was it simply what he had to say, or was there something about the way he moved about, the gestures he used to illustrate ideas or make a point, the facial expressions or the tone of his voice?

If your response is yes, then you will probably have noticed that being a great facilitator of learning is no different to being a Kung Fu master, a jumbo jet pilot or a brilliant opera singer. You practice ‘the moves” so what you say AND do becomes an automatic, fluent and brilliant performance .

As part of my work, I help teachers learn how to use collaborative technologies in their classrooms. They learn how to make the shift from their role as lecturers or instructors to facilitators, a shift from telling to asking, from listening to conversing. We practice "the moves", not only what to say, but what gestures to use with each verbal instruction to quickly help the group work together like a "thinking orchestra". We learn to become facilitators by working with a group of fellow learners, helping each other to improve our performances. Each of us offers subtle reminders of what to say, what buttons to press and mouse clicks to use, and helpful insights into the best sequence for the activity. Each successive performance becomes more brilliant than the one before.

It works this way. Each of us has set of the frontal lobes, which are much larger in humans than in other animals. On the left hand side, just above the left ear, is Broca's area where we orchestrate motor and speech activity. We sequence what we do and say, so we don't stutter, trip, stumble, stall the car, crash the plane nor play shambolic violin concertos. It is here we have "mirror neurons", the empathy center of the brain. These clever neurons fire off when we watch someone do something AND when we perform the action ourselves. They are the same neurons that are activated when children engage in collective play, where they imitate or play at being mothers and fathers, cops and robbers or doctors and nurses and as Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky showed, perform as if they were “a head taller”.

It's almost as good as performing the actions ourselves. Great athletes practice in a similar way. They imagine winning the marathon, skiing faster than ever before, jumping higher than anyone thought possible. By the time we complete 6-7 individual dress rehearsals of the same performance, we can generally rely on Broca's area to automatically orchestrate/sequence an extraordinarily complex array of activities, below conscious awareness. It's' our personal automatic pilot.

So here's a way of practicing a new role:

1. Watch/imagine a person performing in your desired role (or remember their performance)? What did they do or say?
2. Thinking about a new role that you wish to perform, describe in detail the “language game” for that role (words, phrases, concepts, theoretical relationships/connections between concepts)?
3. Thinking about a new role that you wish to perform, describe in detail the “gestural language game” for that role (movement, gestures, demeanor, stance, actions)?
4. Describe a situation in which you will perform your new role. What will you say and do?
5. Working in pairs, perform your new role for a buddy. The other person makes notes about the performance and identifies the types of errors that the person makes (Think about previously learned speech/gestural routines, inner speech to guide your activity, the ideal speech/gesture).
6. What did we learn from this activity?

The growing army of unemployables

2009-06-26T18:13:00.000-07:00

As the world of work becomes more complex and automated there are fewer opportunities to engage in productive employment for people with low levels of literacy.

Some people are not just unemployed, but unemployable. One is six children in the United Kingdom leave school unable to read, write or use mathematics properly. Other OECD countries are in the same boat...

We can help give our kids a great start if we focus on their ability to use language to expand their cognitive powers. If we read our children books, talk about the big issues of the day, explore ideas and play games. But positively.

As the eminent psychologist Lev Vygotsky showed almost a century ago, language plays a pivotal role in our learning and development. We use "inner speech" to learn new skills with the aid of tools, language as conversation to influence or negotiate with others, the symbols of "written speech", signs, psychological methods such as problem solving or relating processes and physical tools which can be as simple as a pen/pencil or as complex as a computer.

A US study by Hart and Risley in 1995 found that by age three, the children of professional parents had a vocabulary of 1000 words and an average IQ of 117, whereas the children whose parents survived on welfare had a vocabulary of 525 words and an average IQ of 79. They also found that by age three the children of professionals had participated in 400,000 positive interactions and 80,000 negative ones. Welfare children were exposed to the opposite treatment; 75,000 encouragements and 200,000 discouragements. One leads to success in life, the other to a life of deprivation and in some instances crime.

If these young children then go to school, and are expected to sit quietly through 10 to 12 years of lessons dominated by teacher talk and algorithmic learning, then the opportunities to develop rich cognitive capabilities via dynamic language exchanges are reduced even further.

What can we do about it? Here's a workshop method to start over:

1. What gets in the way of 21st Century young people becoming the best they can possibly be?
2. What new roles can parents/schools/child care centers play in the development of young children so they have numerous opportunities to develop the language skills to become capable participants in a "knowledge Age" world?
3. Design a learning activity which will help young people expand their language and relating skills so they can take greater control over their own brain development.
4. Develop a design for a school, classroom, home learning experience or community activity that helps young people develop language skills, and engage in many more positive interactions to overcome earlier developmental shortcomings.

Hart, B. & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful Differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks.

Learners as knowledge creators

2009-06-13T01:07:00.000-07:00

A new generation of Web 2.0 tools is now making it possible for people to directly engage in the process of collective knowledge creation.

Web 2.0 tools give us the power to participate/interact/co-create/converse with others anytime/anywhere in the world. We can be both the designers/creators and user/consumers of each others' creative content, to make/view movies, write/tell/read stories, illustrate/develop ideas, find and organize stuff or just do things. Think social networking sites, wikis, blogs, team learning/meeting systems, short message services such as twitter, bookmarking...and more.

But instead of using these tools in the classroom we teachers perform a traditional role of “knowledge tellers”. We have come to believe that what we know is universally important, even though we also know that this knowledge may be out-of-date by the time our students reach adulthood.

We are discovering that this current generation of "interactive kids" is very quickly bored by the sounds of our voices. We become “behavior controllers” to prevent them interrupting or disrupting our classrooms. We block the use of the very same language/gesture tools that would otherwise help young people develop their brains for a successful life. We ask them to sit still and say little or nothing for most of the next 12 years of their lives, except when we say they can.

Yet what most of us really want is to create learning environments, where relating, and thinking skills, particularly dialogue and dialectical discourse, help our young people develop their brains, ready for an increasingly complex 21st century world.

Question: What could we do, starting today, to help learners design and facilitate their own learning activities/"edutainments" and so become active knowledge creators?