Here is some crazy. Embrace it. Yesterday I attended the TechCon conference, a one-day conference put on by the Illinois Association of School Business Officials (IASBO). I went to a lot of great sessions (a Google+ session put on by Hank Thiele as well as a Google Chrome presentation put on by Bryan Weinert; can you tell I'm a Google girl?), but Ryan Bretag's session titled "Agility and Agency: Designing a Future Minded Learning Environment" at the end of the day was the one that really left me with a multitude of morsels for pondering. I have organized these morsels into a bulleted list below, mainly because my type-A savage beast is soothed by bulleted lists. - The school environment should be flexible enough that it can turn on a dime. This means adopting a culture that is in tune with a rhythm of change rather than resistance to it.
- Put wheels on other people's ideas by starting at "yes." This involves embracing the crazies. Having been one of the crazies, I can tell you that they are glad to be embraced and empowered to try new things in their classrooms.
- The most powerful learning comes from experiences. And those experiences encompass more than content and skills; it also focuses on teaching students the habits of mind so they can have the skills
- Learning today is rewindable and on demand. We need to change instruction in light of this. I think we all realize by now that shoveling content at students is not how school should be done any longer.
- Everything should be creation-focused. I agree with this, but believe it should be creation with a focus on the process of creating. The process is just as important as the outcome; otherwise, students make projects just to make projects. I can't tell you how many dioramas, posters, and videos I made during my years as a student that I remember making, don't don't remember what it was I was supposed to have learned. I also shudder to think how many of these projects I made my students do that they just did to get it done--because I had just assigned it one day and expected students to show up with the completed project in a week, without once checking on the progress of what they were supposed to be learning from the project.
- Make student work public. The quality of student work increases greatly when students are publishing their work to a real audience. And, to me, it's not just the act of publishing student work on the internet that's valuable-it's the real and honest feedback that they get from the public that's the most valuable.
- The Internet is the best textbook. Textbooks-whether they are physical or digital-do very little to improve student learning. They often simplify to the point of inaccuracy, they contain too much information, and they highlight, bold, summarize, and surface-level question at the end of each section in such a way that all the thinking is done for students, handicapping them and their learning. Quality assignments where students have to use the internet to gather multiple sources, evaluate those sources, and synthesize information are much more meaningful.
- When you enter a classroom, there shouldn't be a "front" to the room. Learning spaces need to be designed for collisions and connections. New ways of doing school require new designs to the school itself, especially if it is creation- and experienced-focus. It's hard to get students to be creative, collaborate, and critically think when there are no spaces for that. It's especially hard when students are packaged into neat little rows and spaces designed more for compliance than creation.
There was a lot to think about in one session, as you can see. But it was all centered around being future-minded in regards to learning rather than on traditional notions. I don't think that we can afford not to be mindful of educating students for their futures--not if we really want to do right by them.
Photo credit: Espen Faugstad via Flickr
