My Dad recently discovered a box in the garage full of old high school and college papers I wrote. There was even a Hamlet essay from my senior year AP English class. (I got a B-.)
Then there was this one, from the master's degree program at UCLA's Teacher Education Laboratory. I didn't include the date (one of many errors-- check out the "the the" in the 2nd paragraph), but I was in that program from 1992-3, so I would have been 22 or 23 (or 4-5 years older than the average high school senior) when I wrote this. Please read it and then scroll on.
Modern learners need to be masters of both content and media. Thought and symbolic representation/communication of thought is amazing and made all the more so by technology-enabled communities. And it's important to be mindful of what we don't know. Although physiology and neurology shed more light than ever before, we have not been able to find or explain the little voice within. So we can't exactly account for consciousness or how we think, which means learning is still a lot like love: an intimately familiar mystery that each of us experiences differently. And love is one of the most popular stories in human history. How many novels, plays, movies, poems, songs...?
Learning is just as intuitive and just as abstract, and it merits just as much freedom of expression.
Consider this installation art piece depicting the estimated 857 students who drop out each hour. This is far more powerful and persuasive than an op ed essay: "Presidential Candidates Should Address Education Issues." [yawn.]
So why should an inquiry-based assignment come with a predetermined outcome ('this will be a paper,' 'that will be a poster')? Last year a research team began using mind maps. They wrote all the usual MLA-style text, but they were also able to create a living document with links, pics, vids and other media, and they were able to invite communities to view and even participate.
Start looking into online tools (pick at least three to start, I'll post a list soon) that enable the user to convey an idea or tell a story. As you evaluate them, ask yourself: How do you learn? What makes you lose track of time? Do you agree with the idea of teaching as an art? (Feel free to disagree, it's a free country.) Looking forward to your comments.
By online tools do you mean free programs such as prezi and twitter?
ReplyDeleteThose are two excellent examples of presentation and micro-blogging. There are lots of other options out there as well (and new ones are being invented every day!). I will get that list together ASAP so you'll have some ideas to start.
DeleteI agree that teaching is an art. The teachers/classes that I remember the most had a lot of character (usually from the teacher) and often strayed from the lessen plan. However, I also remember the really bad classes that felt more like a computer program than a class...
ReplyDeleteIf teaching is an art, then what are the students who are inspired by the art. Are we bodies that simply admire the gallery's showing? Or yet are we buyers, that take what we have come to find as beautiful and gather it as our own so we may share with the rest of humanity? In other words are we just listening or are we taking the tools we are given and learning to grow.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways, we are all of these things. We start by admiring the gallery, and if we like what we see, we become "buyers". We're able to take those tools and learn to grow by first learning how to use those tools, which we do by listening.
DeleteWe do learn by listening, which is why I put "just" listening. As in hearing it, but not furthering it to the point of using the listening as a tool to grow. In other words, in one ear out the other .
DeleteBut if it goes in one ear and out the other, then that's not truly listening. That's hearing without listening.
DeleteFine "just" hearing then. Either way thats not what the original comment was towards. So now were just arguing for the sake of arguring. With out a point.
DeleteI personally see teaching as a form of art. In my mind I relate it to tattoo art, it takes an extreme amount of dedication to commit time and patience to something that might not ever truly come across to anyone else. Teaching, like any other art form is an expression meant to be relate able to those around you but at the end of the day truly means more to its creators.
ReplyDelete