Tag: Learning

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The Happiness Advantage – need this in your school?

Over the weekend, I wrote a post on the Voices from the Learning Revolution blog called ‘TED in My Classroom‘, with a focus on TED Ed, their latest initiative. I’m still pondering how I might offer something to the project, but I’ll have to mull over it a little more. What they’re looking for is the following:

TED-Ed’s mission is to capture and amplify the voices of great educators around the world. We do this by pairing extraordinary educators with talented animators to produce a new library of curiosity-igniting videos.

I don’t know if I’m one of the extraordinary educators they’re looking for, but I do think there might be something in my bag of educational tricks that might be worth sharing!

What’s in Shawn Achor’s bag of tricks is well worth your time. He’s a very engaging speaker, talking about what he calls ‘the happiness advantage‘; the effect of positive psychology on our productivity and attitude to life. Here’s some text from the transcript of his talk;

But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we’ve found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You’re 37 percent better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we’re able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.

Just imagine if our focus in schools was on this instead of Naplan tests and My School comparisons? I’d like to see schools value this kind of research and invest time and effort in helping our students understand how their state of mind can effect their performance.

I’m happy and positive after watching this. In my view, 12 minutes well spent in any classroom you teach in. Think about sharing it around.

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Where does learning come from today?

Well, according to my son, it’s from the Internet.

Here’s what he told me tonight about his day.

“She gave us a tub of books, random choices off the shelves of books they thought we would like.

My library teacher has no idea of where learning is coming from today.”

I work in a library and I see our non fiction collection losing relevance by the day. Not because the content within the books isn’t worthy, some of it is incredible. But to students with a vast array of online resources available at their fingertips in a 1:1 school, it’s hard to convince them to visit the shelves. In recent times, with some assigned tasks, I’ve recommended the students head to the Internet to find more detail than that available in our books on the shelves. Two paragraphs in  book is sometimes all there is on a topic, and yet they can source web pages with enormous detail. Any wonder they are attracted what is available online.

As Teacher-Librarians, we don’t want to go the way of some books and lose relevance to our students. My son’s comment is something I fear is echoed in the living rooms of countries everywhere. Subscribing to authoritative databases or looking at an ebook platform are important considerations for Teacher-Librarians today. Resources need to be accessible for multitudes of students simultaneously rather than the ‘borrow the book, make it unattainable for others’ model of libraries of the past. To that end, providing school libraries with adequate funding to ensure they can do just that is necessary too. Database providers need to lift their game as well, and make their sites more appealing and user friendly so that our students want to use them.

While I don’t think my son is totally right in his estimation, I do think there are plenty of teenagers out there who’d share his sentiments. In schools’ today, we need to stay relevant and know how to make the most of all the online resources at our disposal.

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Flow, and why 1:1 computing matters in our schools today.

Have you ever been conscious of working in a state of Flow. Those moments when the learning becomes your whole being, everything else fades and extraneous noise can’t permeate your focus on whatever is is that occupies your attention. I’ve been moving in and out of states of flow for the past three years, ever since I discovered the potential of connected learning. Yes, I’d experienced states of flow before that too, but not necessarily connected to the work I do as a teacher.

Last week, I watched one of my students immersed in Flow. We’ve been focused on poetry as a writing task, and have been tying it to our study of The Running Man and the Vietnam War. (Note the cross curricular nature of this study- my students have not only been working on text analysis, but they have been learning about the impact of the Vietnam War on society. It’s so important to have our students able to link learning experiences and understand that learning doesn’t have to be compartmentalised  into the 60 minutes they spend in a History class or an English class). The students have to select an image representing a war situation and then write a poetry piece in response to it. My student selected a photo that many of you will be familiar with; the picture of a Viet Cong prisoner being executed by the chief of Vietnam’s national police. She’s a student with natural curiousity, and she was intrigued with what might be the story behind this picture. She spent the lesson drilling down that story; conducting her own research via the Web and discovering the stories of the victim, the perpetrator and the photographer.

Now, I could have been the teacher who said, “Don’t waste your time doing that, just get on with the task of writing that poem”. But really, what’s the point in doing that? She was self directing her own learning at that point, and was teaching me in the process of doing so. I, and other students in the class, discovered the story behind that photo and we left that class with new understanding. My student left that class with a deep understanding of that photo and this will help her shape a poem that I’m sure will have meaning for her. To my way of thinking, that’s what’s important; something meaningful , not just something fired off because it’s the next assessment task.

And here’s what else I think. This is why it’s important we support and encourage 1:1 programs in our schools. My student could self direct her learning in that classroom because she had a computer with internet access in front of her. Imagine that class without it. She may have found the photo on her own volition before she came to class, but she wouldn’t have been able to drill down the learning. She could have imagined what may have been, and she could have gone home to do that investigation, but instead she was able to immerse herself in the state of flow and be energised by this experience. Yes, some would say you can do the same thing with pods of computers close to classrooms, but I’ve worked in environments like that before and it’s fraught with the difficulties of ensuring access when you have other classes also wanting to use these pods. The fact that it was so natural for her to use what for her is her pen and paper and research device rolled into one just makes sense.

Schools have some important decisions to make. As we see the cost of computing devices, be they smart phones, iPads, iTouches, netbooks etc,  become increasingly cheaper and accessible, decisions need to be made about how schools manage such devices. Do school administrations really think they can continue to dictate the terms of access? Many parents of the students we teach are already sending their children to school with 3g enabled phones giving them access to the unfiltered web. We should be harnessing the learning potential of these devices and accepting that kids are going to bringing their own personal computers, iPads or phones with them to school rather than discouraging their use. The knowledge economy we are living in today demands that we know how to;

  • collect the information necessary to consider a problem or issue
  • employ critical thinking skills in the evaluation and analysis of the information and its sources
  • formulate logical conclusions and present those conclusions in an appropriate and effective way (Information Age Inquiry)

I’m pretty sure my student was doing all three of those things in last week’s class. In fact, as I write this, she’s just submitted her poem via email. It’s pretty damn good; original thinking on display, and reflective of all of the above.

Sometimes we have to just let the learning happen.

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Working together 2 make a difference – growing legs.

I’ve written before about the ning site Working together 2 make a difference that I set up with Angela and Laura Stockman. It’s been slow to get started but is starting to grow some legs. Originally we had decided that we would run it until mid December, but we now feel it is worthy of continuation. We see it as a place where educators and students can come together and share what they are doing in their community to make some sort of difference. Our hope is that it will become a place where community can form and links across classrooms can be made.

A friend of mine from a neighbouring school has joined and I was thrilled to see one of her students  create a page. Here is what she posted;  

I love animals and since you are all such wonderful people I was wondering if you could help? The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily and they don’t have enough food to donate to abused and neglected animals. It takes less than a minute (about 20 seconds) to go to their site and click on the purple box ‘fund food for animals’ for free. This doesn’t cost you a thing. Their advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising.

Here’s the web site! Pass it along to people you know.
http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/

 

Here’s a student who can recognise the potential of this medium to effect change. Did I click the link and click the purple box? You betcha. I encourage you to do the same. Better still, visit her page , click the link and leave an encouraging comment.

You should also visit Laura’s blog and follow her as she tells us who she is grateful and thankful for in the lead up to Christmas. We should take a leaf out of her book and do the same for those who support us.

So readers, I am thankful for you. Thanks for taking the time to stick around and comment occasionally. My life is enriched as a result.

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How do I learn best?

I’m trying to get back into the swing of things now that I’m back from 3 weeks away from my networked existence. I did have a few opportunities to dip into the pool, but they were very quick forays into the shallow end. No deep immersion. Have to jump back in without checking if the water is warm.

Part of the dive back in is getting myself immersed in the ning site that supports the Powerful Learning Practice cohort my school is part of. I feel remiss for not fulfilling my end of the deal, but it was just too hard trying to update the blog for parents with the little time for the internet that we had when we had retired to our rooms (or Starbucks during the day!).

One of the forum discussions has asked us to think back to our best and worst teachers and think about how we learn best. Here is the reply I posted;

My best teachers. Mr. Peterson, Mr. Maughan and Mrs. Underwood. All were chalk and talk teachers for the most part, but they took an interest in me and made me feel that my opinions were valued.

Worst Teachers. Can’t remember their names. They were paycheque teachers who didn’t care for my opinions and didn’t make me feel involved in the subject matter.

How do I learn best. Connection, connection, connection. For me, learning is about relationship building. If I feel that someone is interested in my thoughts and want to encourage me in my learning I will go the extra mile for them. That’s been my experience as a teacher also. I invest time in finding out about the kids I teach; I think it makes a difference. If they know that I care they will do more for me. I’m convinced of that.

How do I learn outside of school now? I take the initiative and search the web for answers. I use my connections, connections, connections. My friends in this online world are the best sharers I’ve ever met.

I liked reflecting on my learning experiences. I still think that taking an interest in the kids you teach is the most powerful thing you can do as a teacher. You don’t need technology to help you with that. You need an open personality and a desire to make a meaningful difference. What I find exciting about teaching now is that I know how to make more meaningful connections for my students with teachers and potentially other students, who have open personalities and a desire to make a meaningful difference. Opening my students minds to the world by connecting with people rather than words on a page is a pretty exciting possibility. This is all about human interaction.

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