Tech plans

Well, I am done my Digital technology in the Classroom course.  I have learned so much in six weeks and I feel excited and motivated to continue to explore digital options for my own classroom.  Here are my top three wishes:

1. Use Google docs to share and collaborate with other teachers and EAs in my school.  I think that this will be more efficient when writing report cards and IEPs.  I also hope to create shared documents to use for our TRDP sessions and keep for an up-to-date and growing list of resources that we can all use.

2. I see so many possibilities for Photo Story 3.  I am envisioning things from book reports to science presentations.  I have several students who I think are going to love this and who it will benefit from being able to express their ideas without the pressure and anxiety of having to read in front of their peers like they would during a power point presentation.

3.  I am going to request two ipads for the Resource Room.  I don't know if they will fit in the budget but I am hoping that they can.  Not only are there a lot of apps that I think will be very educational but the motivational aspect of the ipad is huge for students.  Keep your fingers crossed for this one!

Creativity

The Need for Creativity

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  Genesis 1:1

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  Genesis 1:27

Humans are creative beings. We are because God is and He created us in His image. Creativity is a wonderful gift of God and its value should be encouraged in the educational setting. 

Often when we think of creativity we think of visual art, music or creative writing.  However, creativity is equally important for science, mathematics and even sports.  Without creativity we no longer have innovation, research or originality.

Recently I watched another TED talks video on the subject of creativity.  Ken Robinson spoke on the topic: Do schools kill creativity?   His premise is that they do.  Consider the following two quotes:
"We are now running national education systems this way; where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is, we are educating people out of their creative capacities."
"We don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it."  Robinson believes that we are squandering children's talents of inate creativity by creating a heirarchy of subjects--mathematics and language being at the top and the arts being at the bottom.

 

Now, I question whether many of Robinson's premises are true.  The fact that he states them and gives a cute anecdotal illustration has not quite convinced me. Who is to say that it is the educational systems and not just brain growth and development that changes how much risk people are willing to take in creative pursuits?  In addition, my view of humanity is quite different than his.  Whereas he believes the world would be a better place without humans, I disagree. However, what we do agree on is the importance of creativity in education.  I also agree with his statement that,  "Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they are not because the things they were good at at school wasn't valued and stigmatized actually."

Often we tend to teach content.  We become curriculum driven.  At least I have felt the need to get the curriculum "done" by June and I have heard many of my colleagues express a similar sentiment.  What we tend to forget is to encourage creative thinking and allow for flexibility in the curriculum.  I need to remember to encourage curiosity in all subject areas and allow some freedom in how learning is demonstrated.  I try to remind students that mistakes are something we can learn from, but I am not always successful in getting this message across.

What I try to do regularly is celebrate different abilities.  Not everyone has strong literacy or math skills but quite often those individuals have strong artistic, athletic or people skills.  I try to create opportunities where those who may have weaker academic abilities can showcase their strengths.  I also try to remind parents in parent-teacher conferences that some "disabilities" can become marketable "abilities" if given the right context.

I wonder if the rise of technology is going to shift education away from content learning (you can just Google it anyway) to more skills-based learning. Perhaps with more digital technology in the classroom there will be more emphasis on creativity.  I only hope that the pendulum doesn't swing so far over to the other side that we forget that we have much to learn from what others have discovered and developed and that we will accomplish more if we stand on the shoulders of giants as Isaac Newton once said.

Child-driven Education

This week we were asked to watch the TED talk video by Sugata Mitra on The Child-driven Education.  In this video Mr. Mitra described his "hole in a wall" experiments of placing internet connected computers in slums of India and Africa as well as in schools in England and Italy.  He noticed that children were teaching themselves and teaching each other how to use a computer, play games and search information without any teacher direction.

Over time his experiments grew to include what he terms the "Grandmother method of teaching" and what his students have termed the "Granny Cloud".  Here the "teacher" merely admires and compliments the students, occasionally asking questions like, "how did you do that?" and "can you do that again?"

Mitra has concluded that "Education is a self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon".  He notes that part of the success of his experiment is small groups of children working together and discussing what they find.  He maintains that "A single child in front of a single computer will not discuss" and presumably will not remember as much as those who worked in groups.

Without a doubt, Mitra has had some astounding results and success from his experiments.  His method of engaging students but not giving them the information makes me think of it as a digital Socratic method of teaching.  He poses the questions and the students Google the information.  In his tests, retention of the material learned was astonishing.  I wonder though if as the students become more adept at finding information on the computer, their learning becomes less ingrained?  I wonder if the retention rates were so high because the effort that they required in finding them?

While I am not ready to dispose of teachers quite yet, it would be interesting to apply this method in a class for a lesson and see what the outcome would be in our culture--one that takes technology for granted and is always demanding to be entertained.

If you are interested in watching this video you can find it here.

Empathy Activities

A few people have commented on the empathy activities that I mentioned in the last class. For those who are interested, I thought I would briefly describe them on my blog.

They came about in a staff meeting when the grade seven teacher jokingly wished he could take his class to the Resource Room so his students could better understand what we did. Those of us in the RR looked at each other and thought, "why not?" After a brainstorming session we came up with five activities to share with a class to hopefully have them experience some empathy for those who have academic/physical struggles and explain some of the things that we might do to help. We split the class into five groups and stuck to a strict time limit for each activity. Here is a brief outline:

Visual:  We bought about 5 pair of dollar store safety goggles and scratched them up with sandpaper.  We then had the students try to copy off the board. I did this activity and I purposely used a faded marker on the white board and wrote quickly. I then proceeded to erase parts when I needed more room. I told any students who complained that they should have stopped fooling around and kept up with the class.

Speech:  We bought marshmallows and had students read a passage out loud for the class. The teacher who led this activity asked students to speak more clearly. She also asked them to repeat words multiple times. Many students started to speak more softly so she also asked them to speak up.  Several students had trouble with drooling. (This was the most popular activity by the way.)

Fine Motor:  We bought some nuts and bolts of various sizes from the dollar store as well as thick, fuzzy gloves. We had a competition to see how many nuts and bolts they could screw together in a minute. More points were given for the smaller screws. We also had them do the same activity after without any gloves to see how much easier it is.

Gross Motor:  We bought some cheap binoculars from the dollar store. Students tried to walk on a tape line while looking through the wrong end of the binoculars. They also tried skipping with twine.

Auditory:  We had the students write an "unfair spelling test" using a recording from this site.

After each activity we talked with the students about how it felt to struggle with these things. Most students expressed that they were surprised at how difficult these activities were. We also pointed out to them that they only had to struggle for a few short minutes after which they could remove their "disability". We tried to discuss with them how it might feel if your brain knew what it should do but your body wouldn't cooperate or if you found something difficult when everyone else seemed to master without difficulty. We also shared some of the activities we might do in the RR and also talked about physio, occupational and speech therapy. We talked about compassion, kindness and bullying.

It was very interesting to see that some of the students who have struggled in some of these areas spoke up and talked about how it felt for them to deal with their disabilities and what sort of things they have done to overcome them. Most students responded positively to it (only two or three made inappropriate comments and seemed unaffected by the visit--but that may just have been a social strategy for them).  All in all, we enjoyed being able to share a little of what we do in the RR and the grade 7 teacher said that it made a positive impact on his class.  I encourage others to try it at their school if space and time allows.

I also discovered this activity which I think would be fun to do with younger kids to teach why things don't have to be equal to be fair.