School started on August 12. It’s been a couple of weeks of school now. My classes are developing nicely. We’re all involved in getting ready for our accreditation visit.
Last night was back to school night, where parents came to visit their children’s teachers and classes. Yesterday was a long day and I’m happy that it’s the weekend.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around a meeting that we had with Martin Minsky during the Constructing Modern Knowledge Conference. We met him at the offices of the One Lapton per Child initiative. Since there was just a small group of us meeting with him, the discussion was fairly informal and was structured as a question and answer with conference participants questioning Martin Minsky about his beliefs and experiences.
I had never heard of Martin Minsky but got carried along with the enthusiasm of the the rest of the participants. The discussion was interesting and got me thinking; it helped me affirm my views of education. I won’t write what I personally thought of Martin Minsky from that one meeting but will highlight some of his comments below.
Martin Minsky’s Comments:
Some notable thoughts of Alfie Kohn’s
Constructivism is concerned with how learning occurs which informs teaching.
Giving children brick after brick [of knowledge] does not mean that they have a house; what they have in the end is a pile of bricks.
Grades lead to
We don’t need to fix kids but rather to fix the system so that we can keep the kids
Essential question: What does it mean to be well educated?
Resources mentioned
“Rethinking Rubrics”, Alfie Kohn
Linda McNiel (MET Schools)
My thoughts I think that being well educated means being exposed to a range of opportunity from a variety of disciplines in a creative, exploratory, safe environment. It means having the ability to analyze, think, query, research to find answers to the challenges of the varied areas of life. I believe that people should be able to thrive individually and within the collective. To be well educated means to have the skills, knowledge, understanding, attitude and habits of minds to be able to meet our goals through individual effort and collaboration. I had a conversation with a family member as to which of two independent schools is better. One school focuses on arithmetic and reading in the elementary program while the other school provides opportunities for elementary aged children to learn a second language and to participate in music and art experiences. I instinctively think that the latter model is a better educational system than the former. However, the whole concept of student-centered approaches leads me to concede there are children who will thrive best in each of the two systems. As such, the process of becoming well educated may look different depending on the child, both logistically and structurally. The standard of being well educated will also vary from person to person, as surely the education required of a person depends on the role(s) that they want to inhabit during the various periods of their life.
Peter Taylor, co-creator of FableVision
July 28, 2008
“Art should be part of the experience every single day.”
“Inspire imagination and creative thinking in your school and in your life.”
Help kids find their dot (re: “The Dot”, Shel Silverstein) and to connect their dots to other dots. His dot was art which he connected to storytelling and to math.
What’s your mission?
I like the idea of helping kids find their dot. I think that we often try to fit kids into courses and into ways of thinking, even while talking about child centered learning and constructivism. It’s a real challenge to take the time to know each student well enough to recognize his/her specialty and to help him/her use that specialty to understand, explore and experience the world. This idea challenges me to re-evaluate how I deal with student behavior in the classroom.
Such a simple idea that causes a whole paradigm shift. “What’s your mission?” That encompasses so much more than simply saying what’s your job. It begins to get to the reason for doing that job. It requires reflection, self-awareness, a purpose. I’ve been pondering on my mission since then and thinking about how to align my actions more closely with my theoretical mission.
I got the rest of my luggage today. YAY!! I now realize what I left in the states :(. All in all, getting my luggage here ended up being relatively painless. Thanks Qatar Airways agents. I’ve only been here two days after all. My dark chocolate truffles have become one solid mass of goodness. I guess I can’t give them away as gifts any more. Um, how long will cheese stay if unrefrigerated? I might be using myself as a guinea pig tomorrow to see whether my cheddar and parmesan cheeses are still OK. I won’t serve them to anyone without warning them …
You’d think that I’d have learned my lesson by now. Every time I get too full of myself or too self satisfied, something happens to right the balance. I bought a lovely sugar bowl from Amazon and packed it in my checked luggage from Boston to Khartoum. I kept the bowl in the original packaging to make sure that it would not break. As I got my luggage today, I took it out of the box and admired it, congratulating myself on my excellent packing job. As I reached to place the sugar bowl on a kitchen shelf, the lid slid off and shattered. I’m thinking that I can still use the sugar bowl sans lid. The images that I previously had of my beautiful tea parties need to be reworked.
Khartoum never looked as good to me as when I gazed out the window of the Qatar Airways airplane carrying me home. I was exhausted by the time I finally made it here. Catching naps on planes while traveling for 44 hours is not very resting. I spent today unpacking my home and sleeping. My world will be properly oriented if I can get my apartment organized how I want it and if my luggage comes this week.
I attended three days of the Constructing Modern Knowledge Conference in Manchester, NH. This conference provided an opportunity to listen to a number of presenters on the topic of creativity and constructivism in education; and to explore a number of software and hardware technologies for use in the classroom.
Notable presenters included Peter Reynolds (Fablevision), Lindsay (tech4learning), Bob Tinker and Alfie Kohn. There was lots to think about; I have notes somewhere, mostly in my binder in my lost luggage. I will eventually get some of my more eloquent thoughts on here.
The best part of the conference for me was the opportunity to challenge myself. I got to work with some other ladies using PicoCrickets to create a dancing clown. I helped another group with their construction made of lego bricks and I made some flowers for a third group creating a claymation project. I was inspired by seeing the tech4learning software at work to work in Frames and Twist back in my hotel room that evening. I’ve started following Gary Stager’s tutorial to create a virtual pet in Microworlds EX and am looking forward to continuing it once I’m on more solid footing (i.e. home). It’s fabulous to be able to go to a conference and to come out with real experiences as opposed to lots of ideas.
One of the real experiences that I had was an afternoon/evening adventure with some of the gang from the conference. We finished the conference early that day (3ish) and headed to Boston. The Boston visit started off with a visit to the MIT Media Lab and the OLPC offices. We met with Martin Minsky (future post will expand on this) before heading to the North End. Gary claimed that Pizzeria Regina has the best pizza in the US, and possibly in the world. We broke into two dinner groups but I chose Gary’s group, being a fan of excellent pizza. I had shrimp pizza and it was fantastic. It successfully displaced the old image of vinegary, tough shrimp pizza that I had right before leaving Sudan. We stopped at Bova after the restaurant and Gary got me a black and white cookie which he said is a NY specialty. We then stopped by Mike’s Bakery, which has an extensive selection of baked goods. I would have liked to get an apple dumpling, which I love, but the line was too long. Another long and excellent day.
This conference, along with my other two conferences this summer has inspired me to rethink conferences. I think that I need to be involved in more hands-on, experiential conferences. I already get lots of good ideas from my listservs and blogs. I don’t need to go to conferences for superficial introductions to new technologies. I need to go to conferences with forward thinkers that will help me challenge my thinking about and implementation of teaching. I need to go to conferences that allow me to explore opportunities that I wouldn’t otherwise have, opportunities to tinker and construct within a community of like-minded learners.
Since I am currently working in Sudan, it is difficult to attend conferences during the school year. This gives me about 10 months to research and identify what conferences/workshops I will participate in next year.