We are familiar with the concept of ecology as applying to biological systems, not as a metaphor, but as an interactive living system. We can also consider our human social, cultural, and technological activity as social ecologies of cognition. Not as a metaphor, but as an interactive learning system. Research in neuroscience is revealing how language stimulates neurological activity. Research in cognitive science is showing our human cognition does not reside solely in the brain, but is ‘embodied’ – cognitive processes involve whole body systems to process sensory motor data from our surrounding environments and make sense of our experiences.

The notion that our human experience is in any way separable from the environment – as constituted by other human beings, objects (organic, inorganic), natural and technological phenomena – is an error in conception that can be dated from arguments for Cartesian dualism, but can be traced to earlier philosophies that privilege human life over other life forms and systems. These arguments have been proved to promote an ideological construct to rationalize human dominance of other life systems, but also taxonomies of human hierarchies that privilege whiteness, maleness, and ‘rationality’. In fact, arguments for human transcendence cannot be proven, except as historical constructs of logic.

We definitely need to re-conceive our educational systems as learning, knowledge generative systems rather than knowledge reproductive manufacturing systems. Educational systems must re-define themselves outside their service to provide educated workers for hierarchical manufacturing systems. Part of this process of redefinition must include critically examining the ways educational systems have contributed to the destructive perspectives, policies and practices that have fomented the multiple levels of crisis consequent of our human presence on this planet.

These are not changes in metaphors, but changes in the very paradigms that inform our efforts as educators. Our educational systems are ecological systems, they contribute to the cognitive, social, cultural and technological possibilities for our human existence. When educators understand their role in the formation and perpetuation of the educational systems they are working within, change will happen. Not as broad, idealized strokes of policy from government or institutions, but as an erosion of organizational structures that are recognized to no longer serve the good of humanity, and through their entropy, dissolve to be re-constructed into a new vision of what it means to learn and the role learning, and unlearning, play in the dawning of the knowledge era.

How many of us are aware of the multitude of learning theories that have been written and published over the last fifty years? Furthermore, how many of us actively attempt to apply these theories on a day-today basis in our teaching? With the possible exception of the enduringly popular Bloom’s Taxonomy, we can hazard a guess at very few. However, theories of learning should not be treated as some vague piece of academic reading that you undertook whilst completing your teaching qualification. Moreover, they should certainly not be treated as the sole domain of university academics sat in comfy offices and not having to contend with 9C on a wet Wednesday afternoon. Learning theories can be an excellent resource for developing ideas, resources and strategies that can improve the outcomes of our students and make our own experiences as teacher more interesting and rewarding.

The first thing to note is that the most popular learning theories are not some flash-in-the-pan hypothesis from an academic that has never been anywhere near a modern secondary school. The most well-known theories will have undergone the scrutiny of rigorous tests in schools up and down their country of origin. They will have been picked apart by other academics, eager to point out the flaws in a competitor’s idea. Put simply, we can make the assumption that the ideas put forward are pretty reliable. The second thing to note is there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all-circumstances learning theory. The authors themselves are often very clear about this. Think of learning theories as a Schmorgas board of ideas which can be selected or rejected at will and you will be on the right lines. Thirdly, once you get past the highbrow language, the theories themselves are often remarkably simplistic and easy to apply to your day-to-day teaching – indeed it’s highly likely that you are already using many of them!

I will focus on two of the most well known theories – Bloom’s Taxonomy and Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory

Blooms Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning is on theory that many of us will be familiar with – not least because our subjects models of assessment closely follows the ideas set out by it author Benjamin Bloom in 1956. Bloom’s idea – which was remarkably novel at the time – was to classify different types of thinking and then to place them into some kind of hierarchy, with the most simple at the bottom and the most difficult at the top. Rote learning of knowledge (are you listening Mr Gove) was viewed as being the most simplistic, so was placed at the bottom with more challenging skills, such as evaluation, placed at the top. Bloom’s model has a number of useful applications in the classroom. It provides a set of ready-made objectives that can be easily adapted to just about any topic that you might find yourself teaching (see Fig.1).

Fig.1

Bloom’s is also particularly powerful when thinking about how we can ask better questions and how those questions can be differentiated for different ability ranges (See Fig.2)

Fig.2 – Examples of low and high order questions using Bloom’s Taxonomy

Following on from the last point, it provides a very effective model for differentiating worksheets, exam questions or group work. By asking weaker students to focus on learning the names of different methods of pay motivation, asking more able students to explain (analyse) how and why each method will improve motivation and asking the most able to focus on evaluating the relative merits of each method and making judgements about which are the most suitable it is possible students to make excellent (I hate the word ‘outstanding’ so we’ll use excellent instead) progress against their own prior attainment.

Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Gardner’s was interested in how people learn. He argued that all hold seven different types of intelligence; Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Visual-Spatial, Body-Kinaesthetic, Musical-Rhythmic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal. They key to Gardner’s idea was his argument that each of us holds these seven intelligences in varying amounts – some of use will be good with numbers but have poor spatial awareness, some of use will be musical but have poor verbal skills. Many of us will instantly recognise these different groups of students within our classrooms. The child that cannot sit still (Body-Kinaesthetic) who is sat next to the child that will sit diligently and take notes. Whilst one of these students will excel in our classroom (no prizes for guessing which) the other will struggle to fulfil their potential. However, get the same two students out on the football pitch and the roles are reversed.

Where Gardner’s is often used best by teachers is as a way of enfranchising those students who do not possess the linguistic or logical-mathematical intelligences in a great abundance. These two types of intelligences are well catered for in classrooms up and down the country. However, other types of intelligences are often overlooked by teachers when planning lessons. Of course, this is partly due to the methods of assessments in our subject’s areas – the AQA Economics exam makes no provision for students being able to sing about cross-elasticity of demand! However, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be able to make our classroom more interesting places for all groups of students. Gardner’s ideas can be easily adapted to provide a variety of classroom activities that will address the different needs of students. Role plays, news reports, making up a song or rap, the use of mind maps and group debates are all excellent ways that teachers can provide students with a varied and enriched curriculum in Business and Economics.

Try This!

When planning a new scheme of work, try using the grid below to ensure that Bloom’s and Gardner’s idea are being addressed in your classroom. The results should be lessons with more depth, challenge and variety

Further Reading

Some other theories have been included below

Are educational paradigms beginning to shift? The digital age has meant the way in which we access information has changed immeasurably. The answer to pretty much any question is now at our fingertips or at the end of a mouse or the tap of a tablet screen. This seemingly limitless access of information has irrevocably changed the way in which students approach their learning and will continue to so in the future – we teachers must simply endeavour to keep up!

With this in mind perhaps it is time for us to re-evaluate the role of the classroom in the learning dynamic? Schools continue to employ an instruction based model of education which involves the teacher delivering information to their students. “Today we are going to learn about oligopolistic market structures” routinely translates as… “Today I am going to spend the limited time we have together as teacher and student telling you about the features of an oligopoly market – I expect you to process and make sense of this information in your own time, although I will make some time towards the end of the lesson to support you with this”. Sound familiar?

Teachers will endeavour to support students in their learning and, for the most part, do a pretty fine job working within the limitations of time and students numbers. It seems unlikely that class numbers or the amount of time we get with our students will change in the near future so the question is …. Is there a better way?

Fig. 1 – the ‘Traditional’ model  vs. the ‘Flipped’ classroom model

American college’s have begun to adopt the flipped classroom approach and a way of circumventing these restrictions. The flipped classroom model involves the teacher delivering the ‘taught’ element outside of the classroom. Students complete this element of their learning prior to attending the lesson. This allows the teacher to spend more 1:1 time with students in lessons consolidating their learning and allowing them to progress to more challenging tasks quicker. Doubtless many of you who are reading this will ask what is so new about this idea? Indeed many of us have been employing a ‘flipped classroom’ model for years, setting reading or research homework’s prior to the delivery of a topic (although without the snazzy Americanised name).

It is the variety and accessibility of modern technology that has made ‘flipping’ the classroom a more exciting experience for both teachers and students alike. Video clips, podcasts and blogging are just three tools that can be effectively used to deliver a flipped classroom. Students will often be more enthusiastic about learning through these technologies than through reading a traditional textbook and taking notes (although I believe these methods still maintain significant value). Moreover, these technologies can often be effectively delivered via those annoying little gadgets that seem permanently attached to the students palms and have little white wires that snake up from the uniform towards the ear, meaning that these learning resource can be stored more conveniently and accessed at will.

Where to begin?

My advice is to start small. Select one lesson from your scheme of work to try out before even thinking about delivering an entire topic. Next select a method of delivery. There is no ‘best method’ of delivery – only what’s best for you. Some will be familiar with recording their own voice or themselves teaching on video. Many of us will have written blogs for students. However, the good news is that there is a wealth of resource material available through sites such as YouTube (the excellent pajholden is highly recommended for economics). Textbook pages can be easily scanned and made available to students as PDF’s, as can lesson notes. Powerpoint still works perfectly well despite the programme being increasingly viewed as the perfect cure for insomnia. If you really want to push the boundaries programmes such as Go Animate!, Storify, Camstudio and Jing allow you to create video that can be used to the lesson content. The point is to use whatever works best for you and your students. The most important thing is that whatever resource you provide allows them to learn independently.

Now for the delivery…..

Now that you’ve created your resource it’s time to give it to your students. This should be done before you attempt to cover the topic in a lesson – in other words the information should be new. Make it clear that they are expected to watch/listen/read the resource and make sense of the information themselves. Now to plan the lesson itself. Ideally all students will have engaged with the materials, processed what they can and arrive at your lesson with questions. You may want to ease them into this at first by providing a 5-10 minute recap at the beginning of the lesson. The important thing is not to teach them the topic over again. This defeats the purpose of flipping the classroom in the first place. I would recommend some scaffold questions that will support their progress and act as an effective AFL tool for you to see how much they have understood. You should find yourself presented with a highly differentiated classroom (fingers crossed). Those that either didn’t access the materials or didn’t fully understand the content can get additional support from the teacher, whilst those that fully understood the content can quickly make progress in term of accessing higher level questions from pretty much the beginning of the lesson and don’t have to spend the first 15 or 20 minutes of precious lesson time listening to the teacher explain a topic which they already fully understand. I could dredge up that ominous phrase ‘outstanding progress’ at this point but I’ll leave that to the reader!

The beauty of the flipped classroom is that it allows the teacher to move away from the traditional role of instructor and become more of a ‘coach’ moving from student to student providing support or guidance where it is needed. This can happen for pretty much the entire lesson – not just the last 20-30 minutes, maximising the time we get to spend working with our students directly. The other great thing about flipping your classroom is that students have permanent access to these resources and so can go back to review them after the lesson or as part of their revision.

Via YouTube

Students are Connected.

Approximately 95% of teens ages 12-17 are online, 76% use social networking sites, and 77% have cell phones.  (Pew Internet Project)

Why are Students Not Prepared for College?

Many instructors feel that students coming into the college classroom are not ready for college. They believe  that technology is at least partly to blame. Students are distracted from their studies by the continuous use of social networking.

Others feel that students are not prepared for college because  teachers rely on outdated models of pedagogy?

The Learning Styles of Millennial Students Do Not Match the Old Methods of Instruction.

Jeniece Lusk, a researcher and PhD in applied sociology at an Atlanta-based information technology company states,

Unless the educational paradigms used in our schools are changed to match the non-academic world of the Millennial student, I don’t foresee an increase in students’ abilities to analyze and use critical thinking.

Teachers are Frustrated.

College teachers continually express their frustration with students using cell phones in the classroom. Policies are written to prevent the use of cell phones and instructors attempt to enforce those policies. Yet, some students try to hide their cell phones in the classroom even at the risk of facing discipline or being withdrawn from the class.

What Should Teachers Do?

Teachers cannot continue to teach using the old methods of instruction. School cannot simply add social media into the curriculum, the education system must be completely redesigned to accommodate the learning styles of students who are accustomed to being connected to technology throughout their day.

 The Intellectual Divide.

Tin Tan Wee, an internet expert based at the National University of Singapore predicts that after 2020 more-enlightened educators will start developing curricula designed to tap a post-internet era. He predicts that smart young people who grow up with technology will become smarter while the majority of students will decline in knowledge.

All Young People are Not Digital Wizards.

Contrary to what the statistics might suggest, all young people are not digital wizards. When I surveyed a group of about 20 students in a rural community college, most students could not define social media. The majority used Facebook, only a few used Twitter and no one knew how to use  Google+ or LinkedIn. About half the students had cell phones, or maybe because of the cell phone policy, they would not all admit to owning a cell phone.

 What Do You Think?

What do you think? Will the intellectual divide increase? Do you find that students are continually distracted?

You Can Read the Full Pew Report Here:

Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives (Pew Internet & American Life Project)

The Social Media Revolution

http://www.pewinternet.org

Patchwork of Days, by Nancy Lande

The first book I read about homeschooling, about ten years ago, was Homeschooling: A Patchwork of Days, by Nancy Lande, which tells the stories of a single day in the life of dozens of homeschooling families. It was THE book that made me think “this is what I want for my family.”  It would be years before I even met my husband and *started* on that family, but I knew that I wanted our life to be flexible, adaptable to the day and the people in that day, and what they all wanted and needed out of it.  I have been a lifelong learner, but this book made me into a self-proclaimed homeschooler.

I found it again recently when purging a bookcase that had been filled two deep, and thought it might be a good exercise to do myself: to document an ordinary day of our homeschooling lives, both for you, my readers, and for me, for posterity and reflection.  I call it a snapshot in the title, but I go into at *least* 12 megapixels of detail here, so grab a cup of tea before you settle in.  Here goes!

7:20 – 9 AM: (Waking up, breakfast, talking about responsibilities, getting some cleaning done.  Computer time for me, play time for the kids.) Big D starts the day by coming in to say hello and grab a kleenex for her still runny nose.  She wants me to have breakfast with her, and I’m actually feeling ok, so I say sure. I’m coming out of the bathroom when Big D tells me that she has put the horses that got left out last night right in the middle of the hall, so Beara will see them when she wakes up, because otherwise they would be almost too camouflaged to find. I’m making tea for the two of us when Beara decides to get up, not wanting to miss the unfortunately uncommon opportunity to have breakfast with us both.  Daddyman likes to get out of the house late in the evening, and usually does the grocery shopping then, leaving surprises or asked for items on the kitchen table for us to find in the morning.  Today we wake up to find the cheese danish that Beara asked for next to the daffodils that he got me for Valentine’s Day, even though we agreed not to spend any money.  Big D abstains, saying she is still a sickie, but Beara and I dig in.

I eat quickly, and set about unloading the dishwasher, which gives us a chance to chat while they are still at the table.  We’ve been talking about what new responsibilities they are ready to take on once they turn six in April, and they eagerly volunteer for all of the possibilities I outline for them, burgeoning with so much excitement that they immediately want to get to work tidying up their room, so I close the now empty dishwasher and follow their lead!  [Ed note: I know, RIGHT?!?  Trust me, THIS part ain't typical!]

One quick look at the complete lack of visible carpet, and I go to grab a hamper and a trash bag.  All the hampers are full of clean laundry (whoops!), so I dump one out on the bottom of our bed, hoping Daddyman and Buddy don’t knock it off before I can deal with it.  The girls and I then tackle their room, and get half the floor picked up before their interest wanes and my back pain increases, so we take a break of undetermined length for Wii Just Dance Kids 2 for them, and computer time for me.

I’ve spent about an hour writing this, but honestly I’m on the computer for at least an hour each morning anyway.  I’m just not reading my email, LJ, FB and my twitter feed this morning so I can write this.

I had to unplug my computer and climb up in between Daddyman and Buddy to start writing, but now Buddy is up and at ‘em, and squabbling with Beara over which one of them gets to fill out the insert form from National Geographic.  I used to love filling out forms at their ages, so I guess I get it, but really, guys, there are two forms!

We had kind of a rough last couple of weeks, with all of us being sick at one point or another, but yesterday we shook, first thing in the morning, on having a “No Hitting, No Yelling Day,” and it went *wonderfully*, so we all shook on it again this morning.  Fingers crossed!

9-10:30 AM: (Prime unschooling time, for all of us, except Daddyman, who is just starting to get up.) Big D came in, wanting to trace jelly bracelet shapes on the homeschool desk, but it is covered in chaos, so she put their laptop on the bed, and used the space it had occupied for her work.  Buddy came in to nurse (asking for “ums”), and we listened to a track my cousin composed.  Buddy immediately loved it, and Big D declared it “annoying”.  (One out of two, John!)

Big D shows us her drawing (jelly bracelets are really hard to trace, apparently), and I ask Buddy if he wants to go put his pee in the potty.  We have a new special routine of my giving him a helicopter ride back to the bathroom if he tells me he has peed first thing in the morning, so he happily bounces back in, nekid from the waist down, announcing his success, but I have to talk him into the ride (which is fun for me too), since all he really wants is the sticker for his potty chart.  He picks yellow this time, because it is Beara’s favorite color.  He rarely picks the color just for himself, but he announced that he’s “going to use purple tomorrow because it is COOL.”  He then counts his potty stickers to date: 18. The first went on there well over a year ago when he proved he could do it, but he lost interest after that, and has only started up again recently.  We’ve got a first appointment to  see a pediatric GI specialist next month; hard to learn to poop in the potty when it explodes out one’s backside, and has the consistency of paint.  :/

Big D is the most introverted of the three, and seems to really need time by herself, kind of like me.  Right now she’s playing at the foot of our bed brushing the teeth of her dragons, Purple Spike and Red Toe, while I type and Daddyman snores next to me.  He likely left to go shopping around 1 AM, having worked on his coursework for his RN-to-Nurse-Practioner program once the house was finally quiet last night.  Beara has finally had enough of a workout with the Wii, and she and Buddy are playing castles in the doorway, but soon they’ll migrate to join Big D on our bed for games of baby wolves, dragons, and other general trying out of the big life issues of death, violence, and growing up, all in the emotionally safe space of playmobiles and mommy’s feet.   Our bedroom (with a king sized bed for cosleeping, and, apparently, playing) is connected by a French door to the living room, so I can be part of the kids’ play even on the now wonderfully rare days that pain or other neurological sequelae keep me in bed.  Good thing Daddyman is a sound sleeper…

I stay on the computer, finally reading my email (mostly homeschool stuff), LiveJournal (for my medieval history and geek communities), Twitter (for professional development and like-minded friends, on separate feeds), and Facebook, the one place where my worlds collide, so far, so peacefully.  I spend several hours a day on the computer, reading, writing, laughing and thinking.  It is my main point of connection with our broader culture, helps me develop as a professional, homeschooling parent, and lifelong learner, and is the main way I communicate with my friends, other than my phone-loving BFF.  Not only can I not imagine homeschooling without the resources and community I find online, but I KNOW I wouldn’t be half as sane without the contact it provides.  (Yes, I AM active in my local, vibrant homeschooling community.  Not the same, not even remotely.)

Buddy decides to get dressed around 10 AM, asking for his sister not to look, which is new.  All three kids are actually wearing some kind of clothing other than underwear/pull-ups at at the same time, probably for the first time in days, esp as two out of three kids were too sick to take to Lightbulb Lab this week.  (Lightbulb Lab is the creative problem solving group I run for local 3-8 year old homeschool kids.)

Beara saw the clock (we’re working on telling time), and 10 AM snack is a treasured part of her routine. Buddy comes in, telling me that he already got himself some cheese danish for breakfast, and says “aren’t I a big boy?”  Yup, he is!  We encourage them to work in their zones of proximal development, and cutting and serving his own danish is definitely in his!  He didn’t want to eat it, once he saw Beara’s Oreo, but I sweet talk him into eating half his sugary danish before he eats his wicked sugary Oreo.  Sigh.  Big D asks me to reheat her long-abandoned tea, which I do, but she lets it go cold again.  Some times she really enjoys it, but other days I think she asks for it just because I’m having some!

10:30 -12:30: (Core one-on-one academic time.) Many Fridays find us heading off to either Book Club (a monthly homeschool event hosted by a local library) or Friday Play (something active, planned by one of the parents, but often geared for kids older than mine, and with fees for most of the winter events), but we’ve got too many germs we’re still trying to eradicate, so I didn’t even bother to look at what is scheduled for today.

Beara asks for some math time, so we start to head upstairs to the guest room to have some special Mama/Beara homeschooling time. I ask Big D and Buddy to each come up when the previous person comes down, so I don’t have to do the stairs on a painful knee any more times than necessary.  Beara decides to do her two pages of Singapore Math 1A first, and one of the pages has a spy on it, decoding mangled math sentences on his way to get to a treasure chest.  This becomes a HUGE adventure for Beara, who insists that we whisper, keep track of how many blades of grass and rocks we pass on our way in a tally chart she draws on her scrap paper, and that we have to go fast because there is a “bad guy spy” hot on our trail.  We successfully grab the treasure, have a little celebratory dance, and accidentally break the pencil, so I head down to sharpen it, since I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who knows where it is!  Daddyman is up, and playing chess on our bed with Buddy, while Big D watches on.  Back to the spy story, which continues as Beara moves into her two pages of Explode the Code 1 1/2, so we decode the sentences one at a time, moving between the two rooms upstairs to keep one step ahead of the Bad Guy Spy.

Big D has started being curious about what all the giggling and movement upstairs is about at this point, and comes up *just* enough to be really excited about her turn coming up.  She does her math (she’s one page ahead of Beara, so she started with the spy page, then did one more), then did two pages of Explode the Code Book 2, including reading sentences made up of simple words that were actually super secret spy messages!  Her last page had her writing the following words: wig, cop, stem, step, swim, ten, and twin.  We decided (as the super spy team we are) that this meant that we needed to find the undercover cop, who would tell us which building’s steps we needed to look next to in order to find a secret note hidden in a tree nearby.  That note said where we were to get in the water and begin our ten minute long swim, which would lead us to the twins, who could give us the next clue.  She also decided, while writing ‘twin’, that the ‘t’ and ‘i’, as tall letters, were grown-ups, homeschooling the shorter ‘w’ and ‘n’ who were sitting at a desk, aka the dashed line.

If you have the idea that this last session with Big D went uninterrupted, you are completely delusional.  Buddy had heard about the super super-spy story unfolding upstairs, and really didn’t want to wait until Big D was done to have his turn.  I called down to Daddyman after about the sixth time Buddy came up, and asked him if he could please facilitate Buddy’s staying downstairs.  Daddyman called Buddy down, and that worked for about five minutes.  A few more visits (aka distractions) later, and I went downstairs with Buddy to see if I could help him get engaged in something.  What he wanted to do was play Wii Space Camp, which the girls got for Christmas, and which we tried for the first time yesterday.  Trouble is, Daddyman had gotten burned out on helping them with it last night (some of it is crazy hard, and they need help reading some of it, too), and is about as far from a morning person as you can get.  Combine this with his sleeping in until 10 AM (as opposed to his usual 9 AM), and he had NO tolerance for helping Buddy play today.  I initiated a conversation about what Buddy might enjoy that wouldn’t make Daddyman nutty, and left them to finish it, while I went back up to Big D.  Phew!  (Daddyman relented/got over his morning grouchies, and let Buddy and Beara play Space Camp.)

Then Buddy’s turn, which he was VERY excited for.  He had brought up all sorts of helpful spy gadgets while I had been (trying to be) working with Big D; things like binoculars, a cell phone, a sword, and a building-grabber machine (part of an old gears set).  We started with some math; I drew huge connected circles in the shape of a number bond, and we used snap-cubes to do five basic addition sentences with numbers up to ten.  He decided to do some of them in Spanish, which means I am really glad that we were only doing addition, as my knowledge of the Spanish language does not extend to the word for ‘minus’ – something I obviously need to fix!  Then Buddy said he wanted to do some Explode the Code, too, but I hadn’t brought that upstairs, so we came down to the big bed, where he nursed and did three pages of Book A of Getting Read for the Code, pretty much simultaneously.  (Can you say ‘asynchrony’?)  He is really good at initial sounds, and recognizing letters, but has (understandable) trouble with writing letter shapes, so he and I took turns writing the letters in, with each of us modeling for the other how the letters were written.

All three kids would prefer to do a sprint of ten pages in a day, but then they don’t want to touch it again for over a week, and that just doesn’t add up to the same amount of pages as two a day of each math and Explode the Code do, so that is what we’re trying to aim for instead.  We talked about it as a family the other week, and the kids said that if they got special Mama time for it each day, they’d go for it, thus our doing it upstairs, away from the distracting throng, at least in theory!  My kids love novelty, as you can see, and while it might take longer to move from room to room, tallying rocks our super spy passes, or working out the clue we’ll get from the cop dressed in drag, the kids each did their assigned two pages (or equivalent) in each math and English, plus their own additions to the plan brought in tallying, art, and a foreign language.  Also?  Our only ‘problem’ was kids wanting to get into their portion of the homeschooling morning SOONER.  That is SO my kind of problem!

12:30 – 3 PM: (Lunch and more quality unschooling time.) All the kids done with what we all consider their assignments for the day, Daddyman made lunch (sandwiches for the kids, left over pasta for me), and I documented the work of the morning here.  The kids then moved back to Wii Space Camp, but needed Daddyman’s help for some tricky games, which he complained about before hand, but laughed during, so I’m calling that a win, overall.

I checked my email, and grabbed some good looking links for future explorations, parking them in my Symbaloo account for easy pre-sorted retrieval at a later date.  I also open up a bunch of tabs of interesting looking articles for my own edification and enjoyment that I’ll peruse in odd moments during the rest of the day. Beara came and sat next to me while she illustrated some of her newest book, and Daddyman came to see what links I was finding, watching a few brief videos with me, and generally reading over my shoulder.  Then my BFF called, and we talked for over half an hour.  Her youngest kids are the same age as my oldest; all four of hers are in public school in another state.  We have been friends for almost 35 years, so while we don’t always agree on things, our non-agreements are respectful ones, and I find our conversations thought provoking.

3 – 5:30 PM: (The kids and I start to get a little tired by midafternoon, so we play, do some cleaning, and generally cut ourselves some slack while Daddyman, who slept in latest, gets stuff done and makes dinner.) The kids were starting to get a little frustrated with some of the trickier aspects of Wii Space Camp, so I redirected them with some together time, so we can discuss our plans for the next 24 hours.  We have a day trip planned tomorrow for the medieval history club we participate in, and need to get ready tonight, so we can’t do anything particularly complicated, lengthy, or tiring.  We have been trying to institute a family game night lately, and Daddyman says that while he does’t have time to get us sorted for D&D (esp as he still needs to run to the market for dinner’s missing ingredient), he’d be happy to run a Hero’s Quest game for us.  (I’ve heard him talk about it, but never played, preferring to wing a D&D campaign, personally, but we’re in the middle of a campaign he’s been in charge of, so that won’t really work today.)  He goes to pull out the box and prepare the game before running out to the store, and I try to enlist the kids in finishing our job of tidying the girls’ room.

I get to work on the second half of the carpet, and, while Buddy is a big helper, running things I find to the rooms they belong in, assistance is notably lacking from the actual residents of the room.  Big D is completely AWOL, while Beara keeps sitting down on the bottom bunk bed to work on her book between the specific tasks I give her.  I get it done, then sit the kids down to talk about how I don’t necessarily LIKE cleaning, but I find the results worth the effort.  They agree that the results are great.  Beara says she likes cleaning more when music is playing, and I add that I like it better when I have help, since it makes it both faster and more social.  We end the conversation by their agreeing that they either need to help clean more, or make less mess in the first place.

I leave them to play on the vast expanse of newly revealed carpet, and go into the kitchen to make another much needed cup of tea.  (I had maybe one cup a month before last October, when I finally showed my British roots and started drinking it daily.  Almost 40 with three little kids is exhausting, and chocolate has way more calories.)  Buddy follows me into the kitchen, down on all fours, with his fingers curled back like some kind of paw or hoof.  I ask him what kind of animal he is being, but in our own play language: we make the first letter of every word, as pretty much every intervening consonant, into the same consonant, so “what animal are you being today, Buddy?” becomes “but banibal bar boo being, Buddy?”  We change consonants from day to day, but ‘b’ is a favorite, likely because it doesn’t change his name much/at all, which somehow makes the sentences funnier.  He said he was being a “Bubby Burble” (aka Buddy turtle) and followed me into the bedroom, since my leg was really hurting at this point, and I wanted to get my weight off it.  He curled up with me on the bed, and I asked him more about the game they were playing.  Big D loves to play Big D Turtles, and Buddy had decided to join in.  I asked who Beara was being (this is all in ‘b’ language still), and he said that Beara was being Big D Turtle’s person.  I asked if she was his person too, and he said that no, I was, and gave me a big cuddle.

Then Buddy wanted to nurse some (he frequently takes a nap this time of day), and I said that Buddy could certainly have some, but that Buddy Turtles were reptiles, and reptiles didn’t nurse (‘have ums’, in the family vernacular).  He looked at me pensively for a moment, not going for my shirt at all.  I suggested that maybe he’d like to pretend to be some kind of non-human Buddy Mammal for a bit, so he could have ums, and he decided on rhinoceros, his new favorite animal.  Then he wanted to know how to hold his hands right, so he’d look like a rhinoceros, so we looked them up on Wikipedia, saw that they have an odd number of  thick-nailed hoof-like toes on each foot, and he shaped his hand accordingly, before settling in to nurse for all of two minutes.  He was very mindful of not stabbing me with his horns while we kept reading the site to see how big rhinos got, where they lived (we looked up at the world map on the wall), and that their horns are made of keratin, just like his silky brown hair and his fingernails, tucked under into his little palms.

Not five minutes later, that lovely sweet moment was replaced by Buddy coming in to see me, asking if he could have a chocolate he’d already gotten out of the cupboard.  Earlier in the day, he had brought me a treat, asking if he could have it.  I’d asked him if he had finished his lunch, he’d said yes, I said yes, and then it turned out he’d lied to me.  I took the treat away until after he’d finished, and Daddyman talked to him about lying, and how it wasn’t how people who respected one another treated one another.  (I was about to lead with the whole ‘why we eat healthy food first’ thing, but Daddyman was right – lying was the big issue this time.) So, this time when I asked him if he’d finished his lunch and he said yes, I told him that I was going to have to get up and go check.  It takes me a minute to get up, and I heard him move a plate in the kitchen on my way in: he’d put his plate, with his 1/3 eaten sandwich still on it, on the floor under the table.  He started crying as soon as I found it, and left the room sobbing when I put the treat back up in the cupboard, and moved the chair away from the counter.

Daddyman came home from the market just then, got the full scoop, and brought Buddy back into the bedroom for a Time-In (ie cuddle, to help him reregulate).  Then the three of us discussed how Buddy isn’t really hungry (he’s still getting over a cold, and really may not have much of an appetite), but wanted something yummy.  We talked about what we were having for dinner, and he wasn’t interested, so I asked if there was some healthy food he could think of that sounded yummy, and he said ‘flat cheese’, which around here means Swiss cheese slices.  He had a few, Daddyman and I discussed the logistics of dinner, bedtime and playing, and he went off to make dinner, so we’d have uninterrupted time to play after we eat.  Buddy doesn’t like this plan, but he’d like having his game interrupted to  make and eat dinner even less.  Oh, he just peed in the potty again!  (Not jinxing this, NOT jinxing this!) Beara has been busy drawing weavings like the one I did earlier this week, so she can give them to people at the event tomorrow; she loves making gifts of her art. I did a 20 minute workout on Wii Fit (step routine and marching band, with the kids cheering me as I went), then Buddy is played the biking game until dinner, enjoying launching himself off the cliff and into the river, much to Big D’s consternation – she likes games to be played the way they are *supposed* to be played, darn it!

She came into the kitchen while I was helping Daddyman get dinner on the table, mentioning in passing that there was a new rule for Big D Turtle land: only girl Big D turtles could give presents to boys; boy Big D turtles could not give presents to girls.  I told her that this was sexist, and Daddyman said that she should start a protest, where she and all the other Big D Turtles complained that everyone should be able to give presents to whomsoever they wanted to give them.  I told her that some people think that little girls should all grow up to be mommies who stay home with their kids, and don’t have other jobs, like being engineers, nurses, or astronauts, and that we shouldn’t have the right to *choose* to be home with our kids, like I am now.  Since her new hero is Cady Coleman, she was gratifyingly horrified.  Big D went off to her room, came back a few minutes later, and said that she had made them change the “stupid rule.”  >:)

5:30 – 8 PM: (Dinner and an unusual night, in that we try to take on something big as a family, rather than just unwinding with movies, stories, or independent play. Probably overly ambitious, but good, regardless.)  Dinner was great, or at least I thought so; none of the kids wanted to eat the spicy Mexican wraps Daddyman made for dinner, so they had left over mac and cheese.  I finished first, loaded and ran the dishwasher, and did another sink full of pans, as they had really piled up when I was sick earlier in the week.  Everyone else was done eating at 6 PM, so I asked Daddyman how long the game would take, and he said we could do it in a hour, so I agreed that we could go ahead and play.

Hero’s Quest is a better game than I anticipated, and it turns out I had played it, briefly, once about five years ago – my character was still in the box!  The kids are learning here too, adding up the dice (and bigger numbers when they find gold treasure), planning and prioritizing their actions, working as a team, and using the map as we move our characters around the game world.  Beara as timid (but excited) about looking for treasure in every room, and Big D took every set back as a chance to practice and improve her skillset, which was nice to see in her, since she demonstrates pretty poor frustration tolerance in her daily life.  All three kids took on the same kind of roles they have in our ongoing D&D game; Beara as wizard and healer, Big D as sneaky trap-disarmer, and Buddy as the serious noble warrior, charging into battle to vanquish the bad guy.  I routinely play the multipurpose character, so I can throw heals or whump heads as needed, playing backup to whomever may need it.  Daddyman ran the game well, and we had lots of fun, but it went TWO hours instead of one, and everyone was getting pretty tired by the last half hour, esp as we’re still getting over bugs, all worked out on Wii today, and bedtime is at 8 PM!  Beara started doodling, and not paying attention to the game, and Buddy started bouncing on my sore leg, which made my grouchier than I would have liked.  We rallied for the last two big battles though, and worked as a team to complete the challenges thrown at us.  We gave each other high fives, then quickly segued to  goodnight kisses.

8-10 PM:  (Two out of three kids in bed, Buddy settles down to a movie, while Daddyman and I finally have some uninterrupted time in which to get some work and studying done.) Daddyman just tucked the girls in (he climbs in and gives each of the girls cuddles for a minute or two), and Buddy is nursing and wishing (aka crying) that Daddyman had let him keep holding his warrior game piece, but it is very old, and thus likely lead-based pewter, which isn’t safe for him to handle long term, so back in the box it went.

Buddy is a tired little man, and I hope he settles down soon, esp as we have a full day planned for tomorrow.  It is now 9 PM, and he’s already watched a Word Factory DVD, and just put in a Whistlefritz Spanish immersion DVD, so his intellect is obviously still on full throttle, even if he isn’t handling emotional content very well at this point. Daddyman is in the living room with Buddy, using his own computer to do his homework and work on his writing/publishing stuff, now that the house is fairly quiet. They are both natural night owls, and we’ve discovered that there is just no point in putting Buddy down, as he won’t stay or sleep until he is ready to do so.  He often uses my computer on the desk next to our bed late at night, tucking me in and then going back to playing PBSkids.org, or starfall, or whatever, until he is ready for bed, sometimes hours later, at which point he shuts the computer and crawls in under the covers next to me.  I’m happy to have him use technology in these ways; it gives his brain the stimulation it needs, even as his body is tired, and I get a much-needed break!

I have some work to do tonight though, now that I might actually have a chance to do some.  I want to go through some scope and sequences I’ve got bookmarked, and start to  rough out what the girls will be doing from their birthdays in April until July 1st, for the Minimum Course of Study I want to submit to the state of Vermont by the end of the month.  (It isn’t due until their birthday, but the state gets 45 days to comment on it, so backdating that gave me the end of this month as a guideline.)  If Buddy is still climbing around the bed by the time I’ve done some work on that, I’ll take a look at my energy and proceed accordingly; either work on my research on Anglo-Saxon textiles for a class I’m teaching in March, or watch last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy on Hulu, possibly with headphones, depending on Buddy’s level of attention to it and the content of this particular episode.  Either way, I want to turn off the lights and play a round or two of Sudoku on my cell phone before going to sleep myself sometime between 10 and 11 PM.  Hopefully Buddy won’t be too far behind me.

Postscript: Sorry for the lack of pictures, but they just didn’t have that kind of energy on top of documenting everything in writing. Tomorrow we are going out for a long day in New York State, taking a ferry across Lake Champlain to spend the day with our medieval group, the SCA, watching Daddyman swordfight with friends, spinning some wool, and generally shaking off the winter stir-crazies.  Sunday will likely see Daddyman working on a major assignment for his university program, and my trying to recover enough from our day out to attend a meeting of current and prospective homeschoolers at our local library.  I’ll bring our current curriculum materials, so others can check them out before ordering, and hopefully engage in some good face to face mutual support.

We don’t pay particular attention to weekends as opposed to weekdays, esp as Daddyman’s per diem schedule at the rehab unit he still does some work for varies so much, but after a full day Saturday, and recovering and going to the meeting on Sunday, I know that our weekend is going to be fairly shot in terms of formal homeschooling, not that that will keep the kids from learning and growing.  As you can see from the day we had, formal education amounted to about an hour for each of the girls, and thirty minutes for Buddy, but learning starts first thing in the morning, and goes right up until bedtime and sometimes beyond.  They’ll unschool while I rest up and go to the meeting, and then Monday, and their workbooks and other scheduled activities will be waiting for us.  Days when we don’t have scheduled activities (about half of them, in any given week) might sometimes feel scattered, and even lazy, but writing a detailed log like this has been an interesting experience: being kind of hyper-aware of how we all actually spent our day today has highlighted just how rich and varied a day we’ve had!

Thanks for coming along for the journey.  If you decide to document a day in the life of YOUR homeschooling family, I’d love to know about it.  Why not leave a link to your post here in the comments, so I (and others) can come visit?  The original Patchwork of Days book was written over fifteen years ago; I’d love to see inside more homeschooling lives circa 2012!

(ETA, the following morning: The “no yelling, no hitting” handshake continues to work; Beara just ASKED for it!  Got some solid work on the state paperwork done, but Buddy fell asleep on my shoulder soon thereafter.  I wound up talking with Daddyman until well after midnight, which was lovely, but I knew I was going to be tired today, which I am.  This isn’t the same big deal it might have been though, as Daddyman seems to have gotten the stomach bug we thought we were rid of; he had a rough night, and our plans to go to New York today got kaboshed.  We’ll probably bake cookies, do core academics,  run off some energy on the Wii, and yet again stay home so we don’t risk infecting anyone else.  Big D wants to know why things taste different when she has a cold, so we might do some research on that, who knows.  Be well!

But first, I have to address my own personal interests.  I am incredibly interested in the common core and its updated developments.  Why?  Because as I’ve stated in various other posts, I think there are some really great things happening right now in education.  As we weed through political influences, society’s expectations, and quantifying concepts that are uniquely unquantifiable, I think we are beginning to pay attention to individual students.  The perspectives of educators is narrowing in from seeing classrooms of students as a unit to seeing classrooms of students as individuals; that, I believe, is the great shift happening right now.

So, yes, I am a supporter of what is happening, which explains my excitement about shifting pedagogies and educational paradigms.  It also explains my very serious sense of urgency about implementation and my anxiety about getting clear messages out to my readers–I want to do my part in helping you to be as informed as possible as soon as information becomes available.

Speakers at the conference yesterday included Stan Heffner, State Superintendent for Ohio’s Public Schools, Michael Cohen, from Achieve, Steve Dacking and Eric Gordon, superintendents of Reynoldsburg Schools and Cleveland Schools respectively, Debe Terhar, Ohio State Board of Education, Deb Tully, Ohio Federation of Teachers, and Melissa Cardenas, from the Ohio Board of Regents.  The following are themes from throughout the conversation:

The Importance of the Common Core to Ohio’s Students

• Both Heffner and Cardenas pointed out 41% of Ohio’s college freshmen must take remedial coursework.
• Heffner discussed the difference between “proficient” on Ohio Graduation Tests (which requires students to get only 33% of answers correct on the reading OGT and only 32% correct on math).  This also connected to a later discussion about how cut-scores (for proficiency) are currently defined on Ohio tests versus how they will be defined on PARCC assessments.  Currently, curriculum directors and educational leaders meet to determine cut-scores on a yearly basis by looking at the scores of Ohio’s students.  In the future, proficiency scores will be determined by synthesizing data from assessments both nationally and internationally, which allows for comparing Ohio’s students’ scores with students on a more broad scale.
• The phrase “college and career ready” and expectations of students to meet that level of readiness was a theme of the day, as it should be given CCR standards are the driving force behind shifting to the common core.
• In pursuit of college and career readiness, the breakdown in expected amounts of informational (70% by 12th grade) versus literary texts (30% by 12th grade) students should be reading was reiterated.

Shifting Paradigms

• Speakers from throughout the morning addressed the changes in the way we approach teaching, which can be summarized by the quip “Teachers are not dispensers of learning; teachers need to be facilitators of learning.”  This theme included mention of the traditional versus new classroom, the sage on the stage versus guide on the side styles of teaching, new technologies, and changing expectations in teacher preparation programs, which should now be heavily-based on teaching educators to implement pedagogies appropriate for common core expectations.
• In a sentiment echoed by nearly all speakers, Debe Terhar of the Ohio Board of Education begged attendees, “Please don’t wait to implement common core.”  Deb Tully, OFT, said she has heard teachers say they are waiting for the assessment to be developed to make changes in their classrooms.  Effectively, she said, this is exactly what we’re already doing–teaching to a test.  By waiting until the assessment is available, we are maintaining instead of moving forward.
• Heffner said that implementing the common core now, while the Ohio Achievement Assessments and Ohio Graduation Tests are in place will not hurt students:  ”If I’m asking more of students, how can I hurt them on existing tests that ask less of students.”
• A shift that really, really concerns me as both a previous ELA teacher and a grade level team leader is the shift from non-text-dependent to text-dependent questioning.  This is to happen throughout the subject areas, and as I’ve discussed before, it is vastly different than the way we have approached reading and understanding texts in the past.  Cohen stressed the new assessments will evaluate a student’s ability to use what he or she reads, not to answer unrelated questions.  His presentation shows this shift in question:

Notice the difference in the kind of questions–We,  maybe I should speak for myself only, I am guilty of primarily asking those non-text dependent questions, but the CCSS and the associated assessments will look for those text dependent ones.  I see this as being one of the big challenges in our shifting mindsets.  (Check out the continuing conversation about changes in teaching reading from 2/17)

(Update 2/21:  @edtechgirl wrote an excellent blog addressing the question of text dependent vs. non-text dependent questions.)

The PARCC Assessments

• As I’ve posted before, the PARCC assessments are divided into four tests throughout the school year.  The first two, a diagnostic and performance task assessment, are optional and not required.  (Though, I see serious potential in using both optional assessments as part of an RtI framework!!)  The third assessment, offered 3/4 of the way through the year, and the end-of-year assessment, given at the end of May, will result in combined summative scores that will count for districts.  In the past, my complaint about PARCC was its failure to offer a computer adaptive test, the likes of which Smarter Balanced has planned to implement since the beginning, but PARCC is now moving toward a computer-adaptive test for the first diagnostic.  In terms of RtI, again, this would be a wonderful opportunity for districts who have been using various other screening tools (CBMs, MAP, STAR, etc.) in the past.

Interesting Developments for Education in Ohio

• If you didn’t catch the Dispatch article today, Heffner mentioned the combination of both the Department of Education and the Ohio Board of Regents into one building.  Who would’ve thunk??
• Heffner also said the IIS system currently under development is slated to replace EMIS, an announcement that received a round of applause from attendees.
• Switching from OAA to PARCC assessments will save the state money, said Heffner.  He said we should see a 40% savings because we aren’t paying for people to score the assessments.  This money, he said, should be used to improve the technological capacity and infrastructure throughout the state.
• Multiple speakers pointed out we will see our achievement scores plummet in the first year of implementing the new assessments.  When asked about getting a positive, informed message out to the public, Heffner said the Department of Education would need to take a leading role in providing districts with the communication support.

Lingering Questions and Concerns

In my readings and common core work, I keep hearing the same issues, concerns, and arguments, and I feel like these issues are constantly lingering but never addressed:

• How does the common core handle students with disabilities?  A principal asked this very question yesterday, and received a somewhat short response from a panel member who basically said we need to hold our students to higher standards.  While this is true in our idealized “all kids can achieve” society, we need to look realistically at how to make this happen.  I think teachers are incredibly anxious about having performance evaluations based 50% on standardized achievement of students, and despite the political implications of these evaluations, the issue at the core of this concern is how do we help struggling students?  How do I get an ESL student to read a book at grade-level complexity?  How do I get a student with little to no motivation to attend school enough to reach college and career readiness?  These are real issues, and falling back on the “all kids can achieve” ideology does not provide practical guidance for teachers.
• What will happen to school funding when scores plummet?  Though Heffner said ODE would work to start communicating an informed message to our voting public, educators and policy makers in Ohio already know how challenging the climate is in getting levies, income tax renewals, and bond issues to pass.  If anything, naysayers are looking for reasons to voice their opposition for increased taxes, and plummeting achievement scores (clearly communicated proactive message or not) will provide fuel for that fire.
• How will cut scores on PARCC be comparable to cut scores on Smarter Balanced?  I also think this is an incredibly important issue, and one I have only heard addressed briefly in the Education Week assessment seminar in December.  I am concerned about this.  What will the ultimate approach to comparing these scores entail?  Will the logical conclusion be that one consortium will “win” and all common core states will eventually join the same assessment?  Will educators be forced to switch from one to the other?  How will this happen?
• What do we do about our struggling students?  How do we hold them to the high expectations inherent in the core standards while having realistic expectations of their abilities?
• How do we disseminate information and provide appropriate training that will prepare our teachers for shifting pedagogies?  While at the ETech conference, I heard many times, “Oh, this technology is great, but what do I do with it?”  A similar complaint can be made about the multitude of resources (both true to CCSS expectations as well as far removed from them!) pouring forth in support of common core implementation, which Kathleen Porter-Magee discusses here.   The work that is currently going on with the core standards is unreachable to the individual teacher, and without some serious (and timely) support in HOW to implement, policy is going to continue to outrace practitioner.

Related Links:

Videos and Presentations from the EdExcellence Conference

A few weeks ago, I facilitated a workshop of educational leaders. After viewing Sir Ken Robinson’s Animated RSA “Changing Educational Paradigms”, one participant remarked that we should be careful not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” in our quest to improve schools.  His comment was very thought provoking to me. I began to wonder about this “baby”. What parts of our educational system are worth preserving? I have to be honest. I’ve had a hard time coming up with anything.

It’s not that I am completely against the existing system. I just think that maybe we have never gotten the “baby” part right. The fundamental premise behind formal schooling as we know it today, is flawed. We are attempting to pass on knowledge from one generation to the next. We have organized this knowledge into disciplines and we have figured out what pieces of each discipline are most important. We have even decided when each piece should be learned and have developed highly complex systems to measure system effectiveness.

Although highly efficient in some respects, this standards based approach leaves out what the Dalai Lama and others refer to as “education of the heart”.  Instead we have a “baby” who has evolved into a mature system manifesting competition, compliance, standardization and inevitable failure for large groups of people. Those who succeed perpetuate the system creating discord rooted in low self-worth and a have/have-not mentality.  The results of this system are obvious. Just turn on the news and read about bullying, murder-suicides, war, and various other pathologies.

In order to create positive, large-scale, social change, we might consider viewing the baby as a pure, precious light, full of potential. We need the “baby” of education to become more focused on educating hearts. What would that look like in practice? In my world, schools would place continual and deep-rooted emphasis on fostering inner peace in students. Kindness, collaboration, authenticity, appreciation, dignity, openness, true inquiry and love would prevail.

A friend posted the following on Facebook today. It perfectly captures the essence of the missing piece or “baby” in education.  Thanks to Lisa Seed and especially to Koko for visually expressing this essence!

Symptoms of Inner Peace

Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world

• A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
• An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
• A loss of interest in judging other people.
• A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
• A loss of interest in conflict.
• A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom).
• Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
• Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
• Frequent attacks of smiling.
• An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
• An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

.

In an excellent article in a recent Monday’s (1.23.12) Washington Post, Jon Marcus relates the rise of online free college courses.

An emerging group of entrepreneurs with influential backing is seeking to lower the cost of higher education from as much as tens of thousands of dollars a year to nearly nothing.

These new arrivals are harnessing the Internet to offer online courses, which isn’t new. But their classes are free, or almost free. Most traditional universities have refused to award academic credit for such online studies.

Now the start-ups are discovering a way around that monopoly, byinventing credentials that “graduates” can take directly to employers instead of university degrees [italics mine].

I have argued on my blog for significant reform in higher public education to provide students with a practical, employment-based curriculum, one complemented by courses necessary for an enlightened citizenry – e.g. history, economics, international finance,  and political philosophy.  I have suggested that this reform be effected by: a) increasing vocational education often with the participation and support of industry; b) realigning the curriculum to match the marketplace, eliminating certain more esoteric liberal arts courses which private universities can offer, and focusing on IT and computer science, engineering, business, and technology; c) instituting rigorous entrance requirements for all levels of the educational system – that is, not all students have to attend the premier state four-year colleges, and those who do should be of the highest caliber.

This free online innovation is another way to reform education – to reduce the unrealistically high costs and student debt burdens, and to directly link students to employers with no unnecessary intermediary – the university.  An employer in Silicon Valley may not need learning in the wide array of academic disciplines available at public universities today, but only certain specialized ones.  A student, through an online course which has been accredited, can send his/her application directly to an employer as the first step in an interview and hiring process.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is running a $2 million competition to design digital “badges” that can be used instead of university degrees to prove a job candidate’s experience and knowledge to employers. P2PU and Saylor [online education firms] are experimenting with such badges for students to show they have completed courses.

Just as importantly, the subject matter for these online courses are of top quality:

The content these providers supply comes from top universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, Tufts University and the University of Michigan. Those are among about 250 institutions worldwide that have put a collective 15,000 courses online in what has become known as the open-courseware movement.

This spring, MIT will begin offering certificates of completion to anyone who successfully finishes courses the university makes available free online. There will be a small fee for certificates in this project, known as MITx.

The online students are by no means being shortchanged.  They are receiving the same content and level of education as their brick-and-mortar counterparts.

Perhaps most tellingly, private companies have shown a significant interest in these online courses:

Meanwhile, some businesses that offer tuition reimbursement to employees are becoming interested in the free and low-cost education providers. CompuCom, a Dallas information technology company with 5,000 employees, has begun to work with StraighterLine [one of the online companies cited in the article].

The web-based environment makes complementing these courses easy:

“Libraries are free, too,” says Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. “You can roam around, read books and study. But hardly anyone would say that spending time in the library is a good preparation to work in any economy, much less this one.”

In other words, why spend four slow-paced, often inefficient, and expensive years when you can tailor-make your education with free online study complemented by the vast storehouse of knowledge on the Internet.

“The Pollyanna version of college is that you’re learning and discussing things with your professors,” Arthur [student at an online course offeror] said. “The reality is that you have 450 kids in an auditorium listening to a teaching assistant.”

Obviously, this online route is not for everyone.  Students who can afford a traditional post-secondary education, and who prefer a more social and diverse learning environment, should be able to attend one.  These students can choose among a wide array of opportunities – premier private schools, top public universities, and the many two-year, community, and vocational institutions in every state.

Online education is, however, the wave of the future.  Social networking is in its infancy. Within fifty years or less, the interface between users will become indistinguishable from reality, and a true, believable, virtual environment will be the norm.  In the farther but still not too distant future, there will be a complete computer-brain interface, and we all will be able to access all information in milliseconds, create our own virtual social world, and travel through history and across continents effortlessly.

In other words, the worlds of education, social networking, IT science, and competitive business will produce completely new educational paradigms.

Ron Parlato is a writer living in Washington, DC. He has close ties with Columbus which he visits frequently.  His writings on literature, politics and culture, travel, and cooking can be found on his own blog, http://www.uncleguidosfacts.com.

Between the accent, the well-stated truth, and the visual/spacial way of communicating that truth, I love this video. Please meet my educational philosophy: 

Thoughts?

~Miss Brenda

And, of course, the kids wanted to come see what we were up to down there.

I come from a long line of women who worked with textiles, from knitters to factory seamstresses – my mother’s maiden name is even Webb.  Watching is great, DOING is even better.  My Grandmother taught me to knit when I was five.  My hands were too small to use my finger to hook the yarn over my needle, so I had to move my entire hand to put the thread over, a habit I’ve kept to this day.  On a visit to my Aunt’s sometime around the same time someone brought her spinning wheel over for an evening around the fire, and she trusted me with her hand cards, and taught me how to make rolags (the bundles of carded fleece from which yarn is then spun).  I know I must have made a mess of them, but I loved the rhythm of the process, and watching her spin up my rolags was magic.  She *was* spinning straw into gold, as far as my five year old brain was concerned.  Between these two experiences (and a lot of family stories) I was hooked.

So what did I do today when my kids wanted to enter the workshop-of-doom?  I had them leap into my arms at the bottom of the stairs.  I carried them into the shop, where, at a safe distance, they watched Daddy drill 3/8″ holes where I had indicated they should go.  Buddy went with me today to buy a new coping saw, as my old one seems to have vanished, and I’ll trust each of the kids with a few passes with it tomorrow, and with the sandpaper after that.  I’m sure they’ll want to get in on the warping, too, which is fine by me, since I know I’ll make a tangled mess of it with or without their help.  These experiences are on top of the sewing, embroidery, spinning and weaving each kid has already tried over the last couple of years when ‘helping me out’.

My mother didn’t knit, although she knew how.  I didn’t see a spinning wheel again for over a decade.  These experiences though, for a few days with my Grandmother (who always had to go home to the UK far too soon), and during a single evening one summer with a stranger, lit a spark in me; one that has lead to a lifetime of handwork and enjoyment.

What sparks are being lit for our children?

What sparks can we light in others?

What sparks are waiting out there to light each of us anew?

The plan to start the once a week meetings with circle time and a story.  Sounds great, except I have the sneaking suspicion that they expect kids to actually sit still for it, and I have what I euphemistically call kinesthetic listeners.  Younger sibs are welcome to participate (if they can behave appropriately) in this part of the program, but parents should bring something for the little ones to do when the activities are ‘too advanced’ for them.  My little guy?  Sit and play with, oh, *anything* when he wants to be trying what the other kids are doing?  Yeah, right.  I have learned from experience that letting him try something and even fail miserably at it is still quieter (and less messy) than telling him no at the outset!

The leader wrote that she was game to have him try stuff, which I HUGELY appreciate, but I can still feel her reservations in there, and one of the reasons we homeschool is so that we do NOT need to ask for accommodations!  They don’t need the headache of us, and, quite frankly, I don’t need the stress of trying to both meet my kids’ needs while not stepping on anyone’s toes.  Yes, it would be fun, but I’m really thinking that, at this point, it just ain’t worth the headaches, you know?

Made a fun discovery though: the leader made a comment that “the origami activity would obviously be WAY over the head of a [soon-to-be] three and a half year old,” and I was curious to see if she was right.  While I didn’t see him folding paper cranes any time soon, I thought he might be able to manage some basic stuff with guidance, and asked him if he’d do an experiment with me.  I got some computer paper, folded and tore it to make a square for each of us, and showed Buddy how to make a fortune teller, what my husband says young boys used to call a cootie-catcher.  I thought he might need me to repeatedly demonstrate some steps for him.  Instead, he started *anticipating* steps, and finished parts of it before I did.  Yes, his folding was fairly sloppy, but yo – he’s three!  Without touching his work other than prepping the square, showing him how to make a firm crease, and opening the flaps (where your fingers go when done), he made a VERY credible fortune-teller.  I think we need to add origami to list of crafty plans for this winter!

Buddy (still sugar-shocky from hitting his Santa-provided stocking stash) holding both his and my completed fortune tellers. Hard to tell them apart, eh?

]]> http://turkeydoodles.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/in-praise-of-the-problem-child/ Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:40:43 +0000 Siggi http://turkeydoodles.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/in-praise-of-the-problem-child/ I’m part of a trend.  I’ve been looking at, and writing about, the industrial model of education, and how it just doesn’t work for what our citizenry or economy need in the 21st century.  Alvin Toffler may have started it with his Third Wave, but I saw it again today in a post by Autodizactic.

My spin on it has to do with mainstream views of students and citizens as parts of cohorts, those groups that start school or phases of life together, and travel through them as a lock-step group.  Diverging from the path the rest of the cohort treads is to be considered, literally, a ‘problem child’. 

Compare and contast this with the skillset needed for jobs that both a) can’t be readily outsourced, and b) pay well.  The biggest skills our kids need, if they are to succeed in a volatile global economy, are critical and innovative thinking.  That means being both willing and able to question authority and to look at things in unique ways.  Are those skills kids managed into compliance and drilled in rote memory and algorithms are going to be able to magically pull out of thier hats when needed?  I don’t think so.

Our problem is considering ‘problem children’ problems.

We WANT problem children in our classes and communities.  They are passionate, engaged, and creative.  It is only when we try to tell them what to be passionate, engaged and creative *about* that we run afoul of them. We need to change our educational paradigm away from cohort managment and towards individual facilitation.  We need to cultivate the ‘problem’ in all of our children.  Get ‘problem children’ to tell us what they want out of their educations, let them do real problem based and service learning, and watch them motivate everyone around them with their fire.

Make education a service-sector job where the client is – finally – not just society, but students first and society second.  Students who are told that their dreams matter, and that they are capable of reaching them, WILL take our society along with them.  We would be helpless to resist.

Bertha Honeycutt enjoys her retirement.

Bushwell NY (TWP)

Funeral services for Bertha Honeycutt, retired second grade teacher at Bushwell Elementary in upstate New York were held on Tuesday and briefly interrupted by a phalanx of mourners unable to get into the jam-packed church.

Honeycutt, the last documented public school teacher to teach unobstructed by testing and data mandates, quick-fix paradigm fads, and related educational bullshit, was laid to rest amidst the communal sobs of the nation’s students and teachers mourning the end of an era.

“She was the last of the mighty ones,” former student Hershel Ripley said. “She didn’t have fancy lessons or equipment, and we weren’t taking a multiple choice test every time we turned around. She just taught us.”

Honeycutt taught second grade at Bushwell for 33 years before retiring amidst an upheaval in the school district when a new system of merit pay linked to test data was instituted.

“She got out before the dipshits at the state department killed her,” fellow teacher Carl Duncan said. “They were coming down the hall to her room with a craptacular load of pre-planned lessons keyed to tests with accompanying data sheets when she informed them she was retiring.”

“I remember she had this old battered book of poetry. It was blue and she had leaves pressed inside it from when we would go outside and she would read to us and pick up leaves,” said former student Sandy Lawrence. “I miss her all the time.”

During her retirement, Honeycutt enjoyed crocheting, tutoring children and grandchildren of her former students, gardening, and competition skeet-shooting. She rarely commented on the turn that education had made, though she once told a reporter that “some children need to be left behind.”

In related educational death news,  an autopsy on the corpse of Coherent Capitalization was being performed. The autopsy revealed the cause of death as an inability to combine uppercase with lowercase letters. Police say suspects include handheld technological devices and consumers incapable of integrating lowercase with uppercase letters.

Funeral services are ongoing at various sites throughout the U.S.

The author of this article describes a static, old fashioned top down format of professional learning, as a myth.  I agree that it is and am constantly contributing to our staff site articles and web sites for the staff to read, use, or ignore.  But I have to admit that I am among the very few that does this, so I suspect not everyone agrees with this approach.  Perhaps it is not just a myth but part of a slowly changing paradigm, that may take many years to bring about.  While I could easily set up a blog for our school to share information I am concerned that it would just be something else on my plate.  If more people would show an interest in sharing on our staff site than I might be more encouraged.  I am, however, interested enough to run the idea past my admin team and see what they think.

So do I.  On the other hand, consider Weiler’s Law

I think that creative thinking is a combination of divergent thinking and critical thinking.  I think that both need to be taught.

Somebody said that in order to be a writer, you had to be able to do two things.  (1)  Keep a journal in which you wrote something every day for 12 or 18 months.  (2)  At the end of that period, destroy everything except your three or four best entries.  You have to be able to let the spontaneous ideas flow freely.  And then, at some point, you have to be able to judge these ideas objectively.

There’s room for improvement and new thinking in our public school system, but the system performs pretty well compared to other institutions of society – the financial system, for example. Click on Urban Schools for more on that.

Another interesting aspect of emerging ICT in education is the lack of a theoretical framework where locate the new technologies. According to T. Mayes and S. de Freitas, it “is arguably that there are no models of e-learning per se – only e-enhancements of existing models of learning” (1). They have called perspectives the most common learning theories and argue that the associationist (behaviorism, neural networks, instructional system design –ISD-), cognitive (constructivism, socio-anthropological, socio-cultural constructivism), and situative (context-dependent learning, community of practice) perspectives can be seen as stages in the cycle of learning. In this picture ICT can be tailored by “the e-learning designer to consider what kind of technology is most effective at what stage of learning”. They also state that “as e-learning tools become more powerful in their capability, and global in their scope, so it becomes more feasible to remodel the educational enterprise as a process of empowering learners to take reflective control of their own learning”. 

I find that Mayes and de Freitas make an interesting case on behalf of trying to go ahead with technology despite what kind of philosophy of teaching or theoretical framework you adhere to. 

(1) Beetham, H. & Sharpe, R. (eds.) (2007). Rethinking pedagogy for the digital age: designing and delivering e-learning. London; New York: Routhledge.  

• At best, most writing classes force content and knowledge to be communally accepted, not communally created. At worst, knowledge is still seen as objective and something that simply has to be transmitted from instructor to student.
• The traditional creative writing professor represents the epitome of the old paradigm of university instruction; that is, a master of a specific subject in the ivory tower whom students learn from just by being in their presence.
• At this point in the game, we can no longer say that we simply don’t know any better; we do know better. Many faculty are being forced to actively repress any innovations in teaching by junior colleagues merely to preserve their own position in the academy. Any success in this, however, will be pyrrhic.
• The current crisis of many creative writing programs in terms of funding has been mainly caused by short-sighted policies and a belief that all of their problems are caused by external factors, not by their own inability to effectively place themselves as an essential part of the university.
• Studies have shown that institutions will lose up to 80% of their funding before they realize that the paradigm has shifted and institute change themselves. We are already inside this funding decline. It is not that some do not see the paradigm shift. It is more the case that those in charge refuse to accept it. What remains to be seen, however, is if programs can rebuild after losing this much or if they must be dismantled and new programs created to replace them.
• While some may jump to the defense of the MFA by saying that it was not intended to act as a degree that would launch an academic career, that still does not explain why it continues to exist or how the MFA allows for any sort of change to come forth from within.
• In the old paradigm, educational success was measured by how much you learned. In the new paradigm, educational success will be measured by how well you have learned.
What the new writing class will look like
• There will be little traditional teaching that goes on once the semester starts. The real job of teaching happens months and even years before the semester when the course is designed.
• The primary role of the instructor will not be as a dispersal unit of information. Rather, the instructor will serve to help guide students through the course as well as continually produce critically reflective documentation on how the semester goes for future courses that have yet to be designed.
• The question students will be asked at the end of the semester will not be “what have you learned?” but will rather be “what can you learn and how?”
• Instructors will spend as much time engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning as they will in their own disciplinary field.
• Students will simultaneously be taught how to be responsible for their own quality of education as well as demand it.
• The activities engaged upon throughout the semester will be transparent to students. Students will at all points know and understand why the instructor is asking them to engage in learning activities.
• Instructors will make a commitment to treat teaching as a communal act and support their colleagues in their professional development.
• New methods of assessment will be developed to match new methods of instruction.
• Conventions of writing will not be learned through instruction, but rather the understanding of which will be earned through a process of trial and error.
• As collaborative learning will bring more resources to each group, standards for success will be raised.
• Anecdotal teaching methods will be regarded as “old fashioned”
• Teaching will not be understood as something magical, but will rather be seen as the application of decades of scholarly inquiry into the field.
• Classes that stress cross-disciplinary skills and knowledge will be the norm.
• The usage of technology in learning will define the application of instructional methods.
• Students will view each other as colleagues. Students will value the instructor as a colleague, as well.

I think traditionally, instructors have clearly not assumed undergrads to be adults judging by the predominating instructional styles at most Universities. But it might be more useful to think in terms of Vygotskii’s ZPD (zone of proximal development) whereas we can establish a baseline through testing, but we can also establish a secondary one based on how students respond when given additional resources from the instructor. When doing this, undergrads that have traditionally been labled too immature to bear the full burden of the theories of Andragogy could be more than capable of utilizing them.
In all, I think this still points to the benefits of using a hybrid form of cooperative AND collaborative learning when designing classes. (For those who are interested in the differences between the two methods, Ted Panitz has an excellent discussion of it here)