Fire-Start Learning

I have had many arguments with undergraduates and higher diploma student-teachers about teaching metaphors.  They say things like it is a bunch of rubbish really, airy fairy type stuff that has no practical application in the classroom.  Rubbish is in the eye of the beholder.


I believe that any teacher that cares about what they do would always be questioning their role and what it means to be a teacher.  Your perception of what your role is what drives your practice.  Students are constantly changing so a teacher's role needs to be flexible in order to adapt appropriately.  One of the most useful ways to question your role is to compare and contrast it with other roles, i.e,. a metaphor.  Through such questioning you can develop a better understanding of what your role is and what it is not.  Is a teacher's role similar to a mechanic fixing a car, a pilot trying to fly a plane, or a builder constructing a house?

In the video below, Ken Robinson uses the gardener metaphor for a teacher.  It is one of many types of metaphors, all of which can raise important questions about what effective teaching is.  I personally like the fire-starter metaphor as I believe it conjures up the ignition of a passion for scholarship, a love of learning.  However, it is not an easy avenue to follow as it can spread in directions never anticipated and many others may think you are crazy to play with fire!  It is fine as long you are not afraid to get burned once in a while and realise it is part of the process.  You can add many materials to a fire.  Some will burn bright, some will tame it and some may enrage it.  Do you view yourself as a fire-starter or a firefighter trying to maintain many burning flames?

Learner to Learnist in Education

I have started using Learnist recently.  Learnist is a social learning and networking site that allows boards to be created around different areas of interest.  Learnist is still in beta-version and is invite only. However, many uses of Learnist in schools have already been highlighted, from organising materials, to keeping students up-to-date, to engaging with experts in particular fields, etc.

So is Learnist pretty much the same thing as Pinterest?  Learnist is very similar to Pinterest, but its central focus is learning.   Despite its focus, I also find Learnist has distinct advantages over Pinterest.  When I initially started using Pinterest I had great enthusiasm for it and blogged on some of its potential uses.  However, after using Pinterest more regularly I expressed frustration with technical issues on it.  What is frustrating with Pinterest is that it is very difficult to pin a website on a board when there is no picture on that website, especially when many websites that do not align with Pinterest.  The websites either do not have a picture on their pages or the pictures that they have are not big enough for Pinterest.

What is useful about Learnist is that it lets you pin a website to a 'board' and then search for an image to go with that website, i.e. the picture and the website are not tied together.  The 'board' on Learnist looks more like a list so the layout is visually different from Pinterest where you can see multiple pins at once.  The website that you have linked to from Learnist can also be read on Learnist without having to open up a new page to go to that website.  You can also tag what you post on Learnist so that it will link with similar material that another user may have posted.  In this way you may discover new material on your area of interest.

You can also reposition your posts on Learnist once you have them pinned to a board (something that cannot be done on Pinterest).  For example, I have created a board 'Research - wikis' and posted a number of article links and their abstracts.  I then decided to re-order the articles by their year of publication.  I hope to add more article links and abstracts to this board over the coming weeks.  For these articles I used the front cover of the article as a picture and failing that, I used a picture of the article's author.  The latter type pictures look a lot nicer!

Finally, Learnist allows you to share your posts easily to other websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIN, Google+, etc.  Easy posting to other websites is great for people who have already invested significantly in Pinterest, as they can move pins easily from Learnist to Pinterest.

Like my initial reaction to Pinterest, I am optimistic to see how Learnist will develop.

How I Learn

I recently wrote a blogpost for Anseo A Mhúinteoir (Irish for Here teacher) that asked for contributors to explain how they learn.  Below I have included the blogpost.  Anseo A Mhúinteoir are still looking for contributors.  I would encourage everyone to try it whether you blog or not.  It is a useful exercise to think about how you learn and as a teacher to find out the different ways that others learn.  Anseo A Mhúinteoir have a great variety of contributions from different people all with different ways of learning.

Here is my take on answering the question: 

How do I learn?

It is a difficult question to answer as learning is open to such varied interpretation.   If I was to consider my learning based on the domains in Bloom's Taxonomy (Cognition, Psychomotor, and Affective) I feel that I draw on all three domains.  The domains I draw on most depend on what it is that I am learning.

I believe to really learn something I first need to want to learn it (affective).  The topic to be learned has to connect to some part of my life and if it does, I will happily invest time and value in it.  Secondly, once I am interested in the topic, I find the cognitive aspects can be a natural progression (understanding, applying, evaluating, etc.).  I like to find out as much about the topic as possible and do not enjoy being limited by traditional demarcations of a subject/discipline.  My learning is done through an iterative process of my own research and discussion with others.   Discussion with others is particularly valuable if they have the same or a greater level of interest as it can enhance my interest further (more affective).  Activities that bring in the psychomotor domain can also bring variation and thus some additional enjoyment to learning the topic, but I still think the value of psychomotor activities is lost if I do not have the opportunity to connect it with the theory (cognitive).

Below I have noted some examples that help my learning under the three domains of affective, cognitive and psychomotor.  Some of the examples of course can fall under more than one domain, but for ease of presentation I have placed them under one domain.

Affective Domain 

-Discussion: A simple discussion to find out what other people know about a topic or why they might be interested in that topic can aid my learning.  If I see that a peer is interested in a topic it is helpful for my interest if I understand their reasoning for such interest.  A recent example is seeing what people post on various social media such as Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter and what they find valuable.

-Debate: A good debate is very helpful to my learning.  It encourages me to do my homework per se, so that I have sufficient evidence to support my arguments.  I retain such evidence as there is a context in which it becomes useful and that I can apply it to and evaluate it. The Twitter hashtag #edchatie has good debates every Monday night at 8:30 pm (GMT).

-Leisurely Reading: A good article, short story or book can open my mind to things I had not previously considered, but that I should. 

-Reflection: Everybody always seems to be in a rush with too much to do.  Immersion in the present can impede our perspective.  I find taking the time to reflect on things can be very insightful to the learning process.

Psychomotor Domain

-Experiments - Some people need to be constantly up and doing something.  I am quite happy to sit and ponder.  I enjoy being active, but I do not learn something by simply engaging the psychomotor domain.  I would want to go back to a desk and think about it, and make various notes for enhanced understanding and for future reference.

-Making models - I find making a model of something can be very helpful to understanding it while being physically engaged.  Models are particularly helpful for visualising a difficult concept.  Plus getting students to make models opens the door to ways of representing a phenomenon that you may never have thought of.  Hence, you gain and the students gain.

Cognitive Domain (Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analysing, Evaluating, Creating)

-Questions, questions and more questions - how I get the answers can vary.  The instructor, journals, books, online searches, blogs, podcasts, videos, etc.  The response rate and depth of knowledge varies for each one.  An important aspect of my learning through questioning is that I am not afraid to ask them and to admit I do not know something.

-Blogging: Blogging is something I only started last year, but it has done great things for my learning.  There are so many cognitive functions I need to draw on to write a post of any substance.  Constructing blog posts also feeds back into my affective domain.

-Creating mindmaps - I find creating mindmaps extremely helpful to my learning.  It allows me to see a topic in terms of the bigger ideas and how they connect, and it also breaks things down into finer detail.  I used to find it very difficult to remember concepts, as they were presented as fragmented bits of information.  The bigger ideas were often missing.  Taking the time to connect the dots helped me make more sense of the material and in turn, make further connections.

When teaching it can be a great activity to ask students to develop mindmaps in groups, and to compare and differentiate the mindmaps across these groups.  Download mindmapping software FreeMind for free.

-Mnemonics - I find mnemonics are very helpful to learning things.  For example, I have always remembered the names of the planets from the mnemonic My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us New Potatoes.  Of course, the mnemonic is outdated now, but I still remember it.  Check out this Mnemonic Generator.

-Tests - Tests receive an awful lot of criticism.  I believe many tests could be much more beneficial if people's approach to the tests were based around learning as opposed to getting good grades.  I used to have a terrible approach to tests.  I would try swallow the information and not think it through.  I got sick of it though and decided to re-engage with my learning for the love of learning as opposed to the love of a good grade.  Funny how it worked though, as it gave me better grades than I used to ever get! 

Flying Off the Twitter Handle

Ever wish you could have one or two extra characters for a tweet?  You could if some people shortened their username, aka their Twitter handle.  The maximum length that a Twitter handle can be is 15 characters.  The average length of a Twitter handle is typically 10 characters with the @ included so people in the 11-15 characters bracket could certainly consider cutting their username down.

My Twitter handle used to be @mynameisdermot (15 characters!), but I have now changed it to @dfdonn (7 characters).  My handle @mynameisdermot was created when I first signed up to Twitter and had very little knowledge of what Twitter involved or what a 'Twitter handle' was.  Hence, I had no knowledge that my Twitter handle would eat into the 140 characters that someone else had to send me a tweet.  My new Twitter handle might not be as distinctive as the previous, but it is definitely more considerate of those who tweet me, by a whole 8 characters that is!

So would you consider shortening your Twitter handle?  Some people might have established Twitter handles, but a bit of change never hurt anyone.  In fact, it could add a bit of lift  to your account and give you something to talk about to your followers.  Also, it gives your followers a few extra characters that they previously could have done with.  So all in all, I think it would be a win/win situation for everybody on Twitter.

Despite my enthusiasm for such a change, it is important that if you do change your Twitter handle to not forget to update your Twitter handle on other websites you may have advertised it on, e.g., a blog, Facebook, etc.  Just in case people start to wonder where you went.

What do you think?  Should Twitter handles be shorter than 10 characters?  If your Twitter handle is longer than 10 characters and you do not think it should be changed, why?

Don't Say My Name

 

Is it a bad idea to have students call a teacher by their first name?  It is typically the norm in primary (elementary) and secondary (middle/high school) school classrooms for students to call the teacher by Miss or Mister, sometimes alongside their surname.  Why?

The exclusion of a teacher's first name from classroom interactions is often associated with aiding effective classroom management.  The use of titles can be viewed as a simple and benign way to keep visible demarcations between teachers and students (Rosenblum-Lowden, 2000).   There is the risk and fear that students may view teachers on a more personal level if the teacher's first name is used, and in turn, result in behavourial issues that upset the classroom learning environment.  Despite these assertions, classroom management is still 'a murky area of conflicting ideas and vague rules' (Konca & Otugen, 2009, p.7).  The reason for such vagueness is generally equated with the fact that each teacher is unique and has distinct preferences based on their beliefs (Konca & Otugen, 2009; Rosenblum-Lowden, 2000).

One of the most important aspects of classroom management is establishing clear rules and expectations of the students in terms of their behaviour, and consistently enforcing them (Konca & Otugen, 2009).  Such rules and expectations can be teacher or student generated depending on the teacher's approach (Woolfolk-Hoy & Weinstein, 2006).  Through consistency and continuity these rules become part of the classroom routine and can ensure the effectiveness of classroom activities, as students are aware of what is required (Konca & Otugen, 2009).  From these points on classroom management there appears to be little basis for why a teacher should be called Mister or Miss.  Is the use of such titles just a culturally embedded norm of what student and teacher roles should be?

An important aspect of rules and expectations around classroom management is to consider how many are simply 'ritualistic practices to be strictly adhered to' (Widdowson, 1987, p.85) and that may not be necessary.  It is engaging students in interesting learning activities that is the most significant way of avoiding classroom management issues (Kyriacou, 1998).  Widdowson (1987) distinguishes between two types of engagement that he felt need to synchronize for effective classroom practice: interactional and transactional.  An interactional purpose is focused on roles of appropriate behaviour where it is the mode of interaction itself that is meant to have the educational effect, i.e., socializing students into existing school norms.  A transactional purpose is concerned with meeting specific learning objectives, where norms and expectations are pedagogically based and roles are determined based on achieving such objectives.

There is often an incongruence between these two types of engagement where a proposed change in one conflicts with a protocol governing the other.  Interactional engagement is associated with enforcing things such as labels and titles (teacher, student, Sir, etc.) and in many ways goes against the nature of more student centred approaches that focus on transactional engagement.  Having students address the teacher as Mister or Miss may be seen as a necessary interactional engagement, but it could be argued that such a protocol goes against a transactional focus on student initiative and ownership.  Such visible demarcations like the use of titles keeps a control on what students may be willing to do.  For example, Mian (1995) noted that a student teacher found students had enhanced engagement and felt greater respect when they were addressed as Mister or Miss by their teacher, as opposed to only the teacher being addressed in such a way.  It is worth considering the use of titles such as Miss, Mister, etc., in the school context and the effects it has on interactional and transactional engagement and the alignment between them.

The value of titles is worth assessing in the classroom.  To finish, here are some quotes on the use of titles to consider...

• The clouds may drop down titles and estates, and wealth may seek us, but wisdom must be sought. ~Edward Young
    
• I am not interested in medals or titles. I don't need them. I need the love of the public and I fight for it. ~Olga Korbut
   
• People don't follow titles, they follow courage. ~ William Wells Brown
  
• I didn't come into the business to get awards or titles. ~ Julie Walters
   
• Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. ~ Thomas Paine 

Image taken from: Image


References:
-Konca, M. & Otugen, R. (2009). Effective classroom management in relation to classroom routines and rules. In 1st International Symposium on Sustainable Development, June 9-10, 2009, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
-Kyriacou, Chris, (1998). Essential teaching skills (2nd Ed.).
-Mian, T. (1995). Classroom discipline and management perceptions of a TESL student teacher
-Rosenblum-Lowden, R. (2000). You have to go to school... you're the teacher!: 300+ classroom management strategies to make your job easier and more fun. Corwin Press, Inc. A Sage.
-Widdowson, H. (1987). The roles of teacher and learner, ELT Journal, 41(2), 83-8.
-Woolfolk-Hoy, A., & Weinstein, C. (2006). Students' and teachers' perspectives on classroom management. In C. Evertson & C. S. Weinstein (Eds.), Handbook for classroom management: Research, practice, and contemporary issue (pp. 181-220). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Thoughtful Quotes on Teaching

1. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
   ~ Albert Einstein
   
2. We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.
   ~ Phyllis Diller
   
3. Modern cynics and skeptics see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.
   ~ John F. Kennedy
   
4. A true disciple shows his appreciation by reaching further than his teacher.
   ~ Aristotle
   
5. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
   ~ Henry Adams
   
6. I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.
   ~ Lilly Tomlin
   
7. If a child cannot learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.~ Ignacio Estrada
   
8. Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
   ~ John C. Dana
   
9. A good teacher is a master of simplification and an enemy of simplism.
   ~ Louis Berman
   
10. The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer.
    ~ Alice Wellington Rollins

Real Science Real People

History of Science

One of the most enjoyable and interesting things about learning science is the history behind it, in particular the human endeavour and the circumstances that drove such scientific discoveries.  Such a knowledge of the scientific enterprise throughout history is important in facilitating a deeper understanding of science itself.  Such knowledge shows that science is a complex social activity done by ordinary people (albeit some with unique proclivities) and that this activity is not isolated from the personal, cultural, and political factors throughout any stage of history.   Also, despite some universal aspects to scientific ideas they are not authoritarian, are open to change, and can evolve interactively alongside technological developments.  Importantly, science cannot provide complete answers to all questions, but it is in the determination and curiosity to answer such questions that the scientific enterprise flourishes. 


Unfortunately, in many school textbooks the history of science is pushed to the background with oftentimes only the name of the discoverer given and the year they made the discovery 'Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-Rays in November 1895.  The end. Now here is the theory.'  There is little context given to the story behind the discovery.  At least putting the story behind the discovery as an appendix in a textbook would be great for students to read in their own time.  I believe that it is in the knowledge of such stories that a real appreciation of science develops and an understanding that science is not a body of foregone conclusions.  Deeper understanding is also possible in learning about the history of science, as students can see misconceptions that scientists previously had in relation to certain phenomena and how such misconceptions were overcome.  


So what else is there to know about Röntgen?  Röntgen is commonly portrayed as discovering X-Rays by accident, when he noticed cathode rays (streams of electrons from a vacuum tube) caused fluorescence on a nearby small cardboard screen painted with barium plantinocyanide.  He was colourblind so he actually noticed more of a flickering on the screen.  However, Röntgen had strong investigative skills and he would most likely have discovered X-Rays either way, as he had planned to use the same screen in a following stage of his investigation.  He was in fact such an 'investigator' that he had to prove to himself beyond all doubt that what he was observing was not an hallucination.  It was not surprising that he thought he was going a bit mad as he was able to see through different things: he could see a key in a book, see through wooden boxes, and even see the bones in his hand.  He did not jump to tell people about his discovery, but instead spent a number of weeks in his laboratory meticulously investigating the phenomena further.  He wanted to ensure that he had objective results.  

X-Ray of Bertha's hand

One of the more well-known things about Röntgen is that he did an X-Ray of his wife's hand.  She saw it as an omen for death and refused to go back into his lab again.   Other physicists were very skeptical about his discovery at first, but he had done such a thorough investigation that he was able to answer to any objection, highlighting the strength of his investigations and the importance of such objective results to the scientific pursuit.  Some other interesting aspects about Röntgen was that he was very modest and benevolent.  He wanted the rays he had discovered to be called X-Rays and not  Röntgen rays.  He donated all the prize money from winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901 to his university and he refused to take patents out on his discovery so that it could benefit mankind.  Unfortunately, he later became bankrupt after World War I.  In 2004, element number 111, formerly called unununium, was re-named roentgenium in his honour.




Further Reading:


-Gribbin, J. (2002) Science: A History. Penguin Books Ltd, London.
-Kean, S (2011). The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales from the Periodic Table. Transworld Publishers, London.


Images retrieved from Understanding Society and Wikipedia.

What Did You Learn (At School) Today?

What did you learn at school today?  I heard a parent say this to her child the other day while walking in their direction.  The child said he learned 'Nothing', but his mother pushed him for an answer 'You had to have learned something!'.  I saw the contemplation on the child's face as I passed him and his mother, but never got to hear his response as I walked on.  Witnessing this event gave me flashbacks to my own school days when my parents, some aunt or uncle visiting, or indeed a neighbour would ask the same question.  It felt like talking about the weather, but laboured small talk between a grown up and a child.  In many instances (not all!), I never really felt the person cared if I genuinely tried to answer the question.  Hence, I would avoid the effort required to think, reflect on, and articulate what I had actually learned, and would retort 'Nothing'.

The question 'What did you learn at school today?' typically does conjure up the image of an older family member asking a child such a question.  Why is it that such a question does not immediately conjure up the image of a school teacher or that of a classmate asking a similar question?  Even if the 'at school' was removed from the question one may still not think of a teacher first.  An important way in which people learn is by reflecting on their experiences (Dewey, 1933). Hence, it would be expected that this is something that should occur very often in schools.   However,  many classes end with the bell ringing while the teacher is still in mid-sentence and/or the students are only a few minutes into a new activity.  Planned activities can go on longer than expected and a teacher may decide to just carry on from where they left off in the previous lesson.  In such instances, students have not been given the opportunity to consolidate new ideas covered in the lesson with their previous understanding.  However, such consolidation may be expected to be done as homework.  Homework can certainly play a role in encouraging student reflection, but the beginning of such reflection would be better started in the classroom.

Simply taking five minutes at the end of a lesson for reflection can very valuable.  The five minutes is not a recap in asking students generic questions about the content or activities, but involves asking students what they learned from today's lesson.  This is valuable to every student in that they can articulate what they have learned, but also see what they may have missed from their peers' responses.  Students could also ask each other in pairs or threes what they learned today and then contribute it to the rest of the class through a whole class discussion. Such activities would certainly prepare students to answer what they learned today or what they should have at least learned.

It is also good to ask students questions that they still have from the lesson and they should still have questions if the lesson has in any way been thought-provoking!  These questions are best not answered, but are left with the students as food for thought until the following lesson and in many ways can serve as the basis for much more meaningful homework than assigning questions from a workbook.  As Richard Feynman once said 'It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.'  Schools should develop an equal student appreciation of both answers and questions.  Maybe some day the question most associated with a parent talking to their child after school will not be what did you learn but 'What questions do you have after school today?'.

Reference:
Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: D.C. Heath. 

Wikispaces for Student and Teacher Spaces

A wiki.  What is it?  There is no single definition or description of what a wiki is, but it comes from the Hawaiian phrase 'wiki wiki' which means to hurry.  Franklin and Van Harmelen (2007, p.5) define a wiki as 'a system that allows one or more people to build up a corpus of knowledge in a set of interlinked web pages, using a process of creating and editing pages' (p.5).  The use of the most well-known wiki, Wikipedia, within education can be a contentious issue due to the ability for anyone to edit the pages.  However this 'issue' (if you view it as such) can be overcome as there are various wiki websites available that allow for restrictions on who can access, view, or contribute to the wiki.  Wikispaces is one example of such a wiki being used in education.  

Wikispaces is a free (for educational purposes) wiki host that can provide a private or public (whatever you want!) space on the internet for use in the classroom or indeed with other teachers to share and discuss practice.  From my own experience of wikispaces, there are pros and cons to using it.  I have outlined some of these below.  Overall, I find wikispaces very useful in that the layout is simple and it is relatively straightforward to figure out.  If you have never used a wiki before, but might be interested, I would certainly recommend trying it out.

Pros

• You can name the wikispace whatever you want (as long as the url is not already in use) and so it can be named something that is unique to the group you are setting up.
•  Content is easy to organise.  Any pages that are created can be organised under common folder tags, e.g., pages related to the topic of Light can all be given the tag 'Light' and will appear in that folder.  You can add hyperlinks to other pages within the wikispace or links to pages elsewhere on the internet.  This is particularly useful when the aim is to keep the focus on the text without simply collecting a list of websites.  Many other things can be embedded on the pages such as images, video clips, and links to uploaded files, etc.
•  There are various colour schemes and different layouts for the wikispace, so the wikispace can be given a look and feel that reflects its content.
•  Changes are tracked so you can see who has made changes, when, and where.  Particular pages of interest can be followed so that you receive e-mail notifications if changes are made to these pages.  You can also view how many people have visited the webpages to get an idea of peoples' use of the wiki.

Cons

• The wikispace pages do not support landscape view.  Excel Sheets or Google docs can be embedded within a wiki but, it would be quite useful if a wiki page did not have to align with a traditional view of a page in a textbook.  Albion (2008) notes that we tend to recreate older social forms of organisation in new technologies and not supporting landscape pages on wikispaces is such an example.
• When downloading PDFs of pages, the text does not appear on some PDFs or appears too small.  This issue with text can be particularly prevalent on pages that have tables on them.  Not being able to download material from the wiki diminishes the value of the wiki. 

References
-Albion, P. R. (2008). Web 2.0 in Teacher Education: Two Imperatives for Action. Computers in the Schools, 25(3-4), 181-198.
-Franklin, T., & Van Harmelen, M. (2007). Web 2.0 for content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Bristol: JISC. Retrieved from: http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/148/1/web2-content-learning-and-teaching.pdf.

  

Embracing the Twit(ter) in Education

Wondering if Twitter has any real value in education?  If you are reading this blog, you probably use Twitter already, but here is to just in case.  Twitter has educational value depending on how you decide to use it and if you are willing to invest the time to engage in it.  Twitter is a useful learning tool for teachers, for students, and as a medium through which teachers and students can have shared learning spaces that go beyond the physical walls of the classroom.

Things I find Twitter useful for are:
1. Following people who have similar interests that I can share and receive useful information from.  If you feel there is an information overload from the number of tweets, you can create lists to filter what information you want to see.
2. Having conversations following certain hashtags.  You could talk about education 24/7 on Twitter if you followed all the various education hashtags!
3. Complementing the use of other social media such as blogs, Pinterest, wikis, LinkedIN, Google+, and Facebook.

On a broader level, from analysing the tweets of 45 higher education academics who had over 2000 followers on Twitter, Veletsianos (2011, p.1) found seven different ways academics used Twitter.  Academics who used Twitter:

'1. shared information, resources, and media relating to their professional practice;

 2. shared information about their classroom and their students;

 3.  requested assistance from and offered suggestions to others;

 4. engaged in social commentary;

 5. engaged in digital identity and impression management;

 6. sought to network and make connections with others; and

 7. highlighted their participation in online networks other than Twitter'.

In terms of Twitter as a medium through which teachers and students interact (with each other and potentially a wider audience), there are many strategies that can be adopted.  The following two links highlight 50 ways to use Twitter in the Classroom and  50 ways to use Twitter in the College Classroom.

Now can you say that Twitter has no value in education?


Reference:
Veletsianos, G. (2011). Higher education scholars' participation and practices on Twitter. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.

Learning Through Music

Albert Einstein said 'If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.  I often think in music.  I live my daydreams in music.  I see my life in terms of music.'  
It is not difficult to see why Einstein would think about being a musician if not a physicist.  There is plenty of overlap between science and music, from playing the music to actually understanding the scientific principles embedded in an instrument and how our ears hear it.  Luckily (but not always depending on your taste!), many people have attempted to be both a scientist and a musician, and looked to blend the two.  Music and/or rhymes can be a fun way to learn things.  I used to play 'Phases of the Moon' in Astronomy talks at schools and kids of all ages loved it and wanted to know if they could watch it at home.  Below are five songs (including Phases of the Moon) that could engage more students in science.  Better still, why not get students to make their own rhymes or songs related to some area in science?  Who knows, it could be a youtube hit or at the very least a bit of fun learning between classmates.

Laws of Motion Rap

Meet the Elements

Phases of the Moon

Scientific Notation

The Elements Song

If you like these songs you can check out more at: 
Physics Songs, 
Rhyme N' Learn, 
Science Song and App List, and
Sing About Science. 
 .

The Pearly Gates of School

School in the early 1900s

The Museum of Wellington City and Sea has a small exhibit dedicated to education in the late 1800s/early 1900s in New Zealand.  The exhibit sets out very clear demarcations between 'In the Classroom' and 'Outside the Classroom'.  Firstly, 'In the Classroom' involved strict discipline, generally enforced through the use of a cane or a strap. Teaching was done by rote, having students recite things word-for-word after the teacher, taking notes with a slate and a scribe.  Class sizes reached up to 90-100 kids in town and city areas, such was the growing demand for education. Secondly, 'Outside the Classroom'  involved childrens' activities such as ludo, snakes and ladders, spinning tops, mechanical wind-up toys, making and using slingshots, playing with dolls, etc.  The exhibit noted that 'Crazes came and went' in relation to the activities that children were involved in.

It is interesting to consider the demarcation of 'In the Classroom' and 'Outside the Classroom', particularly in relation to many contemporary education arguments that focus on such a divide, for example, using moblile phones in schools, using social media in schools, or even using computers in schools. Should such technologies or social media be viewed as just 'Crazes' coming and going and/or as things that belong 'Outside the Classroom'?

New technologies have often been hailed as having the potential to change or even 'revolutionize' classrooms, but have often only been adopted superficially (Cuban, 1986).  Over the last 100 years schools have in many ways stayed the same in the classroom with teacher-centred pedagogy, despite many things changing outside the classroom.  Technologies have been adopted, but the technologies that teachers have adopted (markers replacing chalk, whiteboards replacing blackboards (interactive whiteboards in better off schools!) and paper replacing slates) ‘have been simple, durable, flexible, and responsive to teacher-defined problems in meeting the demands of daily instruction’ (Cuban, 1986, p.58). These 'teacher-defined problems' have mostly been defined in relation to teacher-centred classrooms.


There has been recent optimism about the potential of various technologies and social media in education to enhance more student-centred approaches, but issues of technology infrastructure, cyber bullying and other internet safety issues have been used as a crux for some to avoid engaging in sufficient discussion on the potential of such mediums for education.  “Moral panics are a common reaction to teenagers when they engage in practices not understood by adult culture. There were moral panics over rock and roll, television, jazz and even reading novels in the early 1800s.” (Boyd, 2006).  It is of course important that youngsters engage in appropriate behaviour online and moral panics are understandable.  However, such moral panics should be carefully reflected on and people should look to become more informed on such issues, rather than locking up and throwing away the key.  Importantly, it is not moral panics that should guide decisions made on the use of new technologies/social media in schools.

Not much has changed in a 100 years in the classroom, but there are questions for what will happen in the next 100 years.  Will tablet computers replace paper?  Will interactive whiteboards develop 3D capabilities?  Will schools still exist? If the last 100 years are anything to go by and teacher-led pedagogy continues to dominate, the answer to the previous questions would be yes.  Change will occur but only superficially.  Schools need the demarcation of 'In the Classroom' and 'Outside the Classroom', because otherwise...there would be no school. My hope, however, is that the gatekeepers allow more things 'In the Classroom' than 'Outside the Classroom', especially more student-centred approaches.  





References

Boyd, D. (2006) Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace,
http://www.danah.org/papers/AAAS2006.html
Cuban, L. (1986) Teachers and machines: the classroom use of technology since 1920, New York: Teacher College Press.

Letter to a Teacher

The book 'Letter to a Teacher', first published in 1969, was written by eight students from the school of Barbiana.  Barbiana is an all-boys school located in a poor, remote, and mountainous region in Tuscany.  In the book the students describe their school and provide a personal and emotional, but well-supported critique of the Italian compulsory school system, particularly in relation to how the poor are treated.  The book is overflowing with astute insights that provide much food for thought to not just educators, but everyone.  I would highly recommend people to read the book.  I have selected 25 quotes/paragraphs from the book that I found interesting and may provide encouragement to read the book. When the narrator refers to 'you' he is talking to a teacher.  Which number gets you thinking?

1. “You kept them at the search for perfection. A useless perfection, because a boy hears the same things repeated to the point of boredom, but meanwhile he is growing up.  Things stay the same, but he is changing.”
2. “Languages are created by the poor, who then go on renewing them forever. The rich crystallize them in order to put on the spot anybody who speaks in a different way. Or in order to make him fail exams.”
3. “Examinations should be abolished. But if you do give them, at least be fair… What makes you do it? Is it for the good of the students?”
4. “That is the most upsetting aspect of your school: it lives as an end in itself.”
5. “To be a happy student in your schools you have to be a social climber at the age of twelve. But few are climbers at twelve. It follows that most of your young people hate school.  Your cheap invitation to them deserves no other reaction.”
6. “Better an old-fashioned teacher than one who thinks he is modern because he has changed the labels.”
7. “People who get no criticism do not age well.  They lose touch with life and the progression of events.”
8. “You keep telling yourselves how well educated you are. But you have all read the same books. Nobody ever asks you anything different.”
9. “The Cocksure Teacher: Others may have done similar research before us. They must be the kind of people who can't translate their findings into plain language.  We haven't read their findings. Neither have you teachers.
   
   And so none of you has a clear idea of what really goes on inside the schools.
   
   We mentioned this to a teacher visiting our place. He was mortally offended: 'I have been teaching for thirteen years. I have met thousands of children and parents. You see things from the outside. You don't have a deep knowledge of the problems in a school.'
   
   Then it is he who has a deep knowledge - he, who has only known pre-selected boys.  The more of them he knows, the more he goes off the track.”
10. “Schools have a single problem. The children they lose.”
11. “For her, one boy - out of thirty-two - is just a fraction. But for the boy a teacher is much more. He had only one teacher, and she threw him out.”
12. “Children born to others do appear stupid at times. Never our own.”
13. “'I did not chase them away, I just failed them. If their parents don't see to it that they return, that's their worry.' But Gianni's father went to work as a blacksmith at age twelve and did not even finish the fourth year level of schooling.”
14. “So far you have run your class obsessed by the school bell, and with nightmares about the curriculum to be covered by June. You haven't been able to broaden the horizons, to answer the curiosity of your young people or to carry any argument to the very end.”
15. “Let us try to educate our children to a higher ambition. To become sovereigns.”
16. “The fruit of a selective system is a bitter fruit that will never ripen.” 
17. “All you do is keep your eye on the system as it is; but you never really evaluate it.”
18. “Teaching is the kind of profession that attracts many who really don't like it at all. Increase the hours of work and all of them will drop out.”
19. “When university graduates criticize the school and call it sick, they forget that they are products of it.  They fed on this poison up to the age of twenty-five.”
20. “The way pedagogy is taught today, I would skip it altogether - although I'm not quite sure. Perhaps if we go deeper into it, we could decide whether or not it has something to say. We might discover that it says one thing and one thing only. That each boy is different, each historical moment is different, and so is every moment different for each boy, each country, each environment, and each family.
    
    Half a page from the textbook is all that is needed to explain this; the rest we can tear up and throw away.
    
    At the school of Barbiana not a day went by without its pedagogical problem. But we never called it by that name. For us, it always, had the name of a particular boy. Case after case, time after time.”
21. “The theory of the genius is a bourgeois invention. It was born from a compound of racialism and laziness.”
22. “You never asked me questions about such things. On my own, I would never speak out about them. But your young gentlemen could go on asking, with angelic faces, about all sorts of things they already knew. And you would keep encouraging them: 'What a clever question!'  A comedy useless to everyone concerned. Harmful to those bootlickers. Cruel to me, who was unable to be good at that game.”
23. “You were destroying every single ideal I had, with the blackmail power of that diploma you have in your hands.”
24. “Slowly the truth will emerge from beneath the hatred. The work of art is born: a hand held out to your enemy so that he may change.”
25. “A school that is as selective as the kind we have described destroys culture. It deprives the poor of the means of expressing themselves. It deprives the rich of the knowledge of things as they are.”

Five Reasons to Learn

Life List

I was recently at the Death and Diversity Project exhibition in the Museum of Wellington City and Sea.  The project asked people from a range of communities (Jewish, Muslim, Chinese, Columbian, Hindu, Mexican, and Assyrian) in Wellington to share their experiences of death, highlighting many commonalities and differences across cultures.  One of the activities that caught my attention was an activity they had for visitors to the exhibition: to complete a list of five things they would like to achieve from life.

The responses on the lists varied, particularly in relation to age and gender.  However, many related to travelling, to having a good job, to falling in love, to learn from mistakes, to take chances, to help others in need, and to make the world a better place.  One child (aged 6) had simply stated on his life list that he would not be a farmer!

The different lists reminded me of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  Maslow described five levels of development (psysiological, safety, love, esteem, self-actualization) through which humans' motivation can generally move through.  Maslow never actually expressed his levels in the form of a pyramid, but it is a common representation used.  There are many criticisms of this hierarchy, particularly in relation to its ordering (or that ordering them is even possible) and that it centres on individualism over collectivism.  The hierarchy can offer some indication of different types of motivation, but every individual can be drawing on different elements within the hierarchy (something I would have noted from the different life lists at the exhibition).

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

I think the life list would be a very valuable exercise for any teacher to use with their students.  A teacher could get students to do a general life list and then have them do a second one in relation to a particular subject they are doing, e.g., how does or can doing chemistry support your life list?  An articulation of such motivations could be valuable to both the student and the teacher, offering insights into commonalities and differences across students.  In turn, reflecting on such insights may illuminate issues to be discussed or may be instructive on how different material may be approached in class, e.g., what material is more appropriate to group work or what is more suitable to work with on an individual level?  Students' life lists could be dated and stuck on a classroom wall like the picture below, or, if you like your technology, pictures of the life lists could be taken and put on a Pinterest board.  A life list could be completed at certain intervals to see if and how students' motivations can change throughout their schooling.  Where would such motivations fall on Maslow's hierarchy?  Do students highlight that they want to accept facts? be creative? be problem-solvers? help others? get 'stuff'?  have respect?  An understanding of such motivations and the rationale underpinning them are important elements to effective pedagogy.

Life Lists Board

Maslow's hierarchy of needs image taken from wikipedia.

The Point of Pinterest in Education

When I first started using Pinterest I posted on some of the potential uses of it in 'Putting the Pinterest in Education'.  Pinterest has continued to increase in its use and a greater number of ways in which it is being used are emerging.  At the bottom of this post is a recent infographic that highlights 16 ways in which educators use Pinterest (taken from www.onlineuniversities.com).  The 16 ways are discussed in relation to four key areas of curating content, organising ideas, calloborating with others, and students' use of Pinterest.

Despite my original optimism for the potential use of Pinterest I have begun to find certain issues with it, all relating to the four key areas noted above.  Firstly, in terms of curating content, I have issues with finding information quickly on Pinterest.  There is a search function, but search results can still turn up a large number of pins and/or multiples of the same graphic.  Attempts to find relevant pins can be quite time-consuming, especially considering the large size of some of the graphics and then having to scroll down through them.  In certain instances search results do not show up any relevant pins at all.  Also, as an educational researcher, I would like to use Pinterest more in terms of my research work to share links to useful research articles under particular boards.  However, I feel many journal websites (and other websites too) have not aligned themselves with Pinterest, as there is no picture to pin.  Even a small graphic with the journal title and/or number would suffice.  I appreciate this is not directly an issue with Pinterest, but indirectly it is for me in using Pinterest.

Secondly, in terms of organising ideas, there is no great structure under which to organise ideas on Pinterest.  Sure enough there are boards that can be organised alphabetically, but once someone moves over a certain number of pins on a board, they may find it difficult to quickly locate what they are looking for within that board.  A visitor to such a board may also find it difficult to locate what they are looking for.  I do not think boards encompass the complexity of organisation that certain classroom ideas/content may necessitate.

Thirdly, in terms of collaborating with others, Pinterest in isolation is only useful for collaboration in finding other pins of interest and following people who linked such pins.  Such interaction would not equate with much meaningful collaboration.  However, Pinterest could certainly have its uses for greater collaboration when combined with other mediums such as Twitter, blogging, e-mail, etc.  Finally, in relation to students' use of Pinterest, I believe Pinterest could be a nice change of pace for a classroom project, but anything of critical mass may run into issues previously mentioned.

Finally, another issue of Pinterest that has been noted relates to potential copyright infringements.  I think deleting a Pinterest account can be a drastic step.  The important thing is to be aware of what you are pinning.  Plagiarism should be avoided in any use of social media.  Use Google's Advanced Search to find images that are free to use or share.

Pin image above taken from here.

Education Quotes

Here are 10 of my favourite quotes on education.  What are some of your favourites?

Albert Einstein – “One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”

David O. McKay - “True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character.” 

Herbert M. Shelton - “It is always a much easier task to educate uneducated people than to re-educate the mis-educated.” 

Herbert Spencer – “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”

Mark Twain – “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

Nelson Mandela – “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” 

Richard Dawkins - “Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.”

Sharon Salzberg - “We need the courage to learn from our past and not live in it.” 

Thomas Jefferson – “There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.” 

William Butler Yeats – “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” 

Teacher Engagement in Technology Use

The integration of technology in school classrooms commonly focuses on teachers, as they are ‘naturally’ the first person to consider (Zhao et al. 2002).  Zhao et al. (2002) explicate three features that influence technology integration related to teachers: technology proficiency, pedagogical compatibility, and social awareness. 

Firstly, in terms of technology proficiency, Schibeci et al. (2008) present a four stage framework that explains teacher progression in proficient technology use.  The first stage (Where’s the ON button?) relates to technical aspects of the technology and developing confidence in using it.  The second stage (Black line mastery) encompasses the use of the technology for tasks within current curricula.  The third stage (Routine student use) focuses on frequent use of the technology such that the technology becomes a transparent part of the learning process.  Finally, the fourth stage (What’s in the curriculum?) moves towards looking at the bigger picture of curriculum development and educational change that is prompted from using the technology.  These stages have similar characteristics to phases described by Mandinach and Cline (1994): survival, mastery, impact, and innovation (See Steve Wheeler’s blogpost ‘Shock of the new’ for more detail).  In a study of 12 schools, involving 200 teachers it was found that teachers demonstrated characteristics related to the first and second stages, a decreased number of teachers reached the third stage, and there was no concrete evidence to suggest any teachers had reached the fourth stage (Schibeci et al. 2008).

Secondly, pedagogical compatibility refers to how compatible a technology is with a teacher’s pedagogical beliefs.  Pedagogical compatibility could be encompassed as an intermittent stage between the second stage (Black line mastery) and the third stage (Routine student use).  If the technology does not agree with a teacher’s pedagogy, it is unlikely that the technology would reach routine use in the classroom. 

Thirdly, social awareness relates to a teacher’s ability to negotiate through the different intricacies of the school culture and could be viewed as underpinning the process towards the higher stages of technology proficiency.  Such social awareness can relate to factors impacting technology use such as perceptions of assessment and teacher empowerment (Donnelly et al. 2011), that teachers can feel are beyond their control and do not have time to address within hectic schedules.

The factors above focus on the teacher, but there are of course other factors that teachers can have little control over in relation to technology integration that have been alluded to above.  Zhao et al. (2002) describe two domains outside of the teacher that influence technology integration: the innovation itself and contextual factors.  Factors in terms of innovation relate to its distance from the status quo and how much it depends on other people or resources.  Factors in terms of contextual factors relate to organisational support, current resources in schools, and social support from other staff.

What factors most influence your incorporation of technology in the classroom?  Is it personal factors or external factors?  Is it both?

References

Donnelly, D., McGarr, O. and O'Reilly, J. (2011). A framework for teachers' integration of ICT into their classroom practice. Computers & Education, 57(2), 1469-1483.

Mandinach, E. and Cline, H. (1994). Classroom dynamics: Implementing a technology based learning environment. Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Schibeci, R., MacCallum, J., Cumming-Potvin, W., Durrant, C., Kissane, B. and Miller, E.-J. (2008). Teachers' journeys towards critical use of ICT. Learning, Media and Technology, 33(4), 313-327.

Zhao, Y., Pugh, K., Sheldon, S. and Byers, J. (2002). Conditions for classroom technology innovations. Teachers College Record, 104(3), 482-515.

Image taken from the following link. 

X Marks the Spot

Ernest Hemingway highlighted the need for good writers to have “built in, finely tuned, crap-detectors” and Neil Postman highlighted this to teachers back in 1969, noting that the most useful thing teachers can help students to learn is how to make distinctions between useful talk and bullshit.  However, children start to become very astute to what their parents know and to what their teachers know from a young age.  There is nothing wrong with a parent or a teacher not knowing something or making mistakes, the problem is what they do about it. 

In terms of classroom practice, McNeil (1982) highlights certain techniques that some teachers use in order to control their students, to save face per se (that are readily applicable to parents), and the result of such techniques could be argued to perpetuate a culture unwelcome of mistakes.  These techniques relate to:

1. Fragmenting knowledge – reducing knowledge to lists makes things easier for teachers in that teachers will not have to try to aid students in connecting ideas and they can get students to simply learn things as lists (the fact that this is a list is ironic, but for the sake of four points you can connect the dots),
2. Mystifying knowledge – teachers can create mystery around a topic in order to stop discussion on it, which in many cases is a means to covering their lack of knowledge on a particular area, e.g., I could explain that, but it is too complicated to go into right now.
3. Omitting knowledge – teachers can omit material that they do not see as important, particularly for their generation, but could be important for their students’ generation, or omit material that may cause debate and may lead to more questions they cannot answer, e.g., You do not need to know about that scientist, it is not on the test.
4. Defensively simplifying knowledge – teachers can obtain student compliance with material by promising that it will not be difficult and that they will not go into too much depth, e.g., this is boring material, but I promise I will keep it simple and get through it as quickly as possible.

I believe that a culture that patronises mistakes has partially caused the development of such strategies.  When this culture meets a classroom where teachers are perceived as experts or perceive themselves as having to be experts, such practices are personified.  It is because of such a culture that I partly do not agree with Neil Postman’s terminology as it can be interpreted as intimidating and witch-hunting in nature.  How is a student supposed to feel in completing a task if mistakes are going to be interpreted as bullshit?  Ernest Hemingway was also quoted as saying ‘The first draft of anything is shit’.  In other words, mistakes are a natural part of the learning process.  I would say that the first draft of anything is shit, but it is something.  What it becomes is a matter of choice.

Reference

McNeil, L. M. (1982) Defensive Teaching and Classroom Control. National Inst. of Education (ED), Washington, DC.

Image taken from the following link.