BP6_2009121_Anti-Teaching
WOW! What an article! I found myself totally enthralled with the Anti-Teaching article by Michael Wesch. I enjoyed his description of moving the desks around to try and arrive at a better learning environment and the mystified janitors. I know exactly what he means. I am constantly having to move the desks around in my classroom to allow for 2 or 3 person conversations, group conversations, and group projects. My class goes through several shuffles on any given day. My classroom is so crammed with 35 students and desks that it is very hard to have anything but restrictive long rows. I was so very excited, inspired, and motivated to read his description of Spaceship Earth. I wanted to jump out of my seat and applaud his final paragraphs. I hate it when kids ask, "Will this be on the test?" or "Will I have to turn this in for credit?" I would love it if I never had to do another grade. I would love to focus in on each student accomplishing a fluent level of Spanish. Learning Spanish is a real life skill and it has been reduced to a grade and a step for graduation. I have enjoyed the last several months using my own PLE and the Full Sail CMS is awesome. I enjoy having the dashboard and being able to track my own learning and achievement. I found the article on the 7 things you should know about PLEs was basically information that I had already gleaned from developing one for this class. I like that the article was concise and clear. I think what I liked the most was the scenario and the conversational way that the information was delivered. I appreciate that both sides of the issue of PLEs was portrayed, but it was very clear that the author was biased towards PLEs. Overall I think it was a great article; just not as inspirational as the anti-teaching one. :)
If I could change the world of education to make it better for all learners it would include a combination of educational facilitators and PLEs. The student would work collaboratively with a educational facilitator to create the PLE. There would still be a set of minimum standards that would be achieved, but they would be a lot more like competency standards. A few years ago I heard about a school concept called "unschooling" where the student self-directs their own education. I thought it was a bit fruity at the time, but I can see how self-directed study is more similar to intrinsic learning. I have studied Waldorf schooling practices extensively and it has some merits as well. I appreciate how it connects History and Art together. I think that linking classes together is much more natural. We rarely do anything that does not interconnect with other things. We compartmentalize education so much. I think that we have turned it into something unnatural. I know that when I learn best I am actively doing something. I also find that I am learning more than one concept at a time. Education is dynamic and I think that designing a system of education that links not only the student with the subject matter, but the student with other students and the subjects together in a more natural way would be the best final outcome. To say it simply; I would take the best practices of many different educational styles and combine them into a multidiscipline class that made the teacher function as a facilitator and designer and the student would work collaboratively with the world while completing tasks in a CMS and adding to a PLE.
Sound familiar? Great minds think in same circles. :)
http://www.photoexpress.com/Content/sea-water-beautiful/3200656
1 comments:
I agree with you. Placing desks in other than traditional settings often aids learning in ways that can be difficult to measure. I recall a high school English class where the teacher had the desks in a semicircle with his desk in the middle. We read poetry and discussed things about it. I remember liking the setup because I could hear the teacher better. I felt that we absorbed the lessons better especially since I still remember some of the poems we covered like The Highwayman and The Odyssey.
I think that when teachers remember to throw out as much of the traditional as they can, then education can really begin to matter again.