In the morning we dove into a discussion on this talk below from TED.com by Sugata Mitra called 'The Child-Driven Education' and then had some discussion.
The video conjures up all sorts of feelings excellently which were excellently summarized by Mena as "good and bad!" My feelings exactly! It's easy to look at this video and feel like folks are advocating for replacing teachers. There are certainly some who are doing that in the world. There are movements in education where teachers are under attack, mass firings, and many resulting in computer driven/scripted curriculums. It's also easy to look at this video and get intimidated by the aptitude, the fluency that children seem to have with technology, especially if you are a person who struggles with it.
The real crux of the video though, I think, sits in, as the title states, the child-driven education. Promoting students to dive in, find answers, be included in the process of learning, and to apply their skills rather than be led is one of the major themes here. This type of immersive, messy learning takes practice but ultimately is far more interesting to students, and creates a stronger bond with the teacher. It moves the teacher into a mentorship role. The video is a great compliment to the work we explored yesterday from Reggio Emila. Mitra states near the end of the talk that he thinks 'education is a self-organizing system.' Promoting collaboration in the classroom, allowing creativity within projects can lead to far better results that scripted models. I'm hoping to show you many examples where creative freedom can lead to far greater results that you might expect. It can also lead to some failures, but those too, can be excellent learning!
The projects are ambitious that Mitra describes, especially this one where he says: 'Can Tamal speaking in a South India village teach themselves bio-technology on their own.' The students work in the experiment were pretty staggering. It's a great example of how mentoring, supporting, and providing a framework can lead to some great results.
The role of the teacher as a mentor, as a coach, as being involved in the process of learning rather than directly leading instruction is a pedagogical shift, and a difficult one for some. The goal here in this course... is to explore this avenue, both in our class material and discussions and also in your own individual projects... but here's the rub...
Frustration will happen! Learning to problem solve, learning to seek out answers and develop troubleshooting skills takes time. The teacher, as I'm trying to do (and hopefully well!), becomes a mentor, sculpts new opportunities, encourages collaboration, and... helps find answers.
We'll explore this theme and style of work more tomorrow (Wednesday) and also try grouping people by interests at tables to promote even more collaboration. Moving around the room can be a good thing! We'll also explore (and encourage) that some may want to start shifting to explore other areas, explore other curiosities. My first thought is to conjure a table for: Photoshop, Video Editing, Blog/Website creation, and discuss how to promote growth in those groups. We'll ask what other themes we can group up or create new ones from new interests.
We'll have a discussion in the morning tomorrow about some of the guidelines for posting to the class blog (one post due by tomorrow, Wednesday, by the end of class), and another at the end of the week (Friday) that summarizes the work you did individually or as part of a group, what you learned, and your thoughts: What you are curious about, what you'd like to explore... whatever strikes your fancy to share. I'll also encourage people to chime in on things other folks post on the site.
We'll explore this statement and have a discussion:
Children have a remarkable capacity for intensity.
Creative, immersive projects vs scripted, specified curriculum... we'll see where the discussion goes.
We'll also review how final projects will be presented to the class Friday, and we'll see where folks would like to direct class discussions and / or some work sessions.
We'll start off with the discussions, introduce some new thoughts, an also explore an incredible music program in Venezuela.
Thanks for your work today! Looking forward to the next round. Adam
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