1 problem......UNCERTAINTY
- uncertainty without a commitment in the classroom to build a public causes selfish acts (from both teacher and student): when there is no public, no medium, and no commitment towards each other's performance in the classroom everybody is on their own when faced with a challenge.
uncertainty causes community
commitment reduces uncertainty
2 solution.....PUBLIC/COMMUNITY
- you learn when you help others:
help others and yourself, build your media through building your public.
learning is social - people and story telling at the core
want students to learn more?
1) model learning through pln's (with or w/o tech)
richardson: how to network a) safely b) ethically c) efficiently
2) invite them places w/rich questions
3) get out of the way
4) repeat till 1,2,3 is flow
personalization - through pln's - student centric as kids are creating their own public - engaged in meaning-making and writing about self-selected topics that are relevant and interesting to them - wieman's expert individual tutor - web 3.0 tailoring
cameron - knows intuitively how to create value, add his default intention is to share it with others - most of the time for free. That why he has a public
do we insist that the class is one public?
or do we just insist that each one in the class finds/creates their own public (like in real life)
that would allow for more of a passion driven pursuit.
ie: some who need it - may be a part of a community of 2 (them and expert individual tutor), others may end up with a community of hundreds
thinking of the adult as the only teacher is artificially turning abundance into scarcity
and it's minimizing our available resources exponentially
we can ask interesting question, like: how do you feel about your friend not being so good about math?
a fixed group of people that constantly interact with each other and learn from each other
the leader also learns, but in different domains
if teaching is helping others then everybody is at the same time student and teacher
the adult in the room is also student and teacher, and is there to supervise and direct, but no to control
in order to maintain community/change - need to work thru 3 human universals
1) We're all humans and we all want to be treated as humans all of the time.
2) We all make mistakes. When those mistakes are rectified gracefully remarkable stories
are being created.
3) We all have our own cultures and values that don't always match but we all try to do good.
w/in plns - discover design do
per alan november - who owns the learner....
and - 2 things we're short on: time and money
so give them back time in class and quit spending so much on gimicks to help teach
3 sustainability.....SUCCESS
- success is defined by how everybody is doing
(kids ask each other - how can i do better)
status is not from teacher but from other kids in class
community reduces uncertainty
together we are more
new media changes how we know ourselves
if we don't learn socially there's a host of things we'll never learn
To learn something new about the world we first have to learn something new about ourselves.
the quality of the school should depend on the innovation of of the kids
"focus on the performance of the public instead of on the performance of self"
as long as others aren't getting it you know that your learning isn't complete yet
if people can't accept this they can also not accept that you can't be right by yourself
they start from a selfish mindset and get to this logical conclusion
if we define school success by the performance of their publics that students will know that they can't perform well against 'the nation' through a selfish mentality
whatever their community - the goal is to learn something that they will then create a platform to share it with others - a larger public
so - the new assessment - graded on what your public has learned
kids should understand that how well they do directly depends on how well others are doing
in my days there were very smart kids in the class, and then the rest of the class, there was just a divide and it didn't matter to or for the smart kids how badly the other kids were doing
a bad school is a school with such a divide
and state-wide and national genius contests make this problem worse.
any focus on the performance of self is a loss
the guideline should be: how is everybody doing?
smart kids in class get status from their teachers
that status is probably intimidating for other kids, making his status unreachable for them
so they just let the smart kid doing, increasing his status
that could be replaced with kids awarding each other, not the teacher
assess through portfolios/google-ability/your public's growth
uncertainty - connections - commitment - public - media - ......repeat
Leaders are those who most publicly learn and bring others with them along the way. - Ben Grey
it's surprising how closely leadership and media are related
1/ the class room is the public
2/ everybody is both teacher is student
3/ learning is social
4/ focus on the performance of self is a waste
5/ success is defined by how everybody is doing
6/ status is distributed by everybody, the adult should not get the upper hand in status distribution
7/ learning is a group effort, only if the group has learned is learning complete
8/ describing the adult in the room as teacher is troublesome
9/ in good schools everybody is doing well
the current problem of education is two-fold:
1/ under-estimate the true costs
2/ over-estimate the true valuers:
how do we have to behave to create real value - to create authentic value
the value is in how much students learn,
if we think they learn close to 100%, but they actually learn only 10% ...
so umai haque says: "the world is a function of what we do"
ok- so if we assume that the world is indeed a function of a what we do
basically this is emergence
then, if professionals in education use assumptions that are antagonal to the true capabilities of our brains and psychology then it's going to be very hard to create any value and we will automatically underestimate the costs because we'll be thinking we're doing ok.
so anybody who believes is performing ok but in reality is not is under-estimating the true costs of his or her actions
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