Lego as student design

Hello All!

Today, I wanted to take a couple of minutes to recap again what is going on in my brain, including all of the topics from this week. Basically, in the most simple of terms, the thing that I took away from this week was the fact that while we think that we are doing right by students, I really think we are going about it in the wrong way. As teachers, we mean really well and come up with these grand ideas of how to convey our teaching but I am realizing over time, how important it is to connect what students learn with the real world. We give them tons of info but are slacking on the use of it. I think that was what I most learned from doing the designs this week and talking about others designs. I also noticed that while it SEEMS to you like you are being crystal clear in your design plan, that translating these ideas to others is not always as easy. I think that is something for all of us to learn from. Be explicit in your design language- the more detail the better (in this context)!

This all being said, we focused on students as designers this week with our new design principal. This led us to: "good learning designs engage students in using content to construct meaningful outcomes by comprehensively scaffolding students' ability to design." The most helpful part to understand this idea was when we read the article about Gainesville high school building a Makerspace. Now, I found some flaws with this idea because I am not sure why we need a space to be making things, but I did like the concept of the kids leading the design of what they are making. It means that the activity is much more authentic because it is a design of their own. They connect to real life because they are physically doing it!

Great- so what does this mean to me and in my library? To me, this means that I need to let loose of my control a bit more and have my students be able to be the designers of their own projects. They do not always need a prompt! We perpetually underestimate kids, and I think that giving them the right scaffolding would really help them in making great choices for their authentic activity and whatever they would be making. This is a weird connection, but it reminds me of legos. When I was a kid- there was no such thing as a lego kit. You bought a tub of legos and used only your imagination and that was it. Now, you can buy loose legos of course, but it is much more common to buy a kit with directions for the kids to build. Where is the creativity? Where is the build your own attitude? It actually is pretty depressing. We are selling kids short! We need to really stop doing that, and let them spread their creative wings.

Creative Spirit of Teachers

After our last class, our latest design principal was the teacher principal that read: “Good learning designs are anchored in the creative spirit of design by teachers who recognize their before action role as designers.”  During our class, we did a lot of different activities to lead up to this principal. The latest design principal was one that made me think about what I do as an educator. I think that we as teachers are often more used to the PLAN rather than the design of the lesson. As one of my professors in undergrad said, “why recreate the wheel when you can use someone else’s idea and make it your own?” This idea to me, exemplifies the fact that we, as teachers see ourselves as planners not designers. Teachers are usually people that use someone else’s plan and make it our own- this is not designing. This is planning. This is not best practice. We are often so wrapped up in doing what we have to do, with SOLs and other constraints that we are not interested or do not have the drive to be an innovator of design. Teachers as designers SHOULD be commonplace, but it is not. This is why we need to change the way we think about plans and stop thinking in terms of a plan and start thinking of design as the best way to be an effective educator. To say that I have this concept totally understood would also be a huge over-statement of my own skills. But, I think that after this week, I am definitely closer than I have ever been.

I think one of the most helpful things this week to get me to this point of tentative understanding was reading The Creative Spirit of Design by McDonald. Basically, it says in the most simple of terms that using imagination, creation-oriented, and inter-disciplinary designs are the characteristics of the creative spirit. Designers then will also become more flexible and perceptive of WHAT the students needs actually are. For some reason, having it laid out in that way really spoke to me. As I said, I really am starting to GET the idea.

When reading the Carlgren, the more interesting thoughts was that “teachers are expected to do and know something other than they do and know.” I literally loved this quote because of the truth in it. We are literally taught to be planners in school but you get into the real world of teaching and have to do lots of other duties as assigned during your lessons. It’s frankly exhausting even though we love our jobs. The other striking thought was that no one questions when a doctor says something is inoperable and when teachers say that a student is not teachable, everyone thinks teachers are not professional or are in need of more schooling to learn how. It could not possibly be the student needing to change. It MUST be the teacher.

To sum up, I am going to try my hardest to be a teacher designer, not just a teacher-planner. It is not easy and is going against a lot of what I thought was good practice- and need to reverse that thinking into good design. But, at least I do have the design principals to go on to make the transition easier! Now, on to the ZPD in my own life, where hopefully I come out on the other side with deeper meaning. FINGERS CROSSED! 

Using our design knowledge to connect the dots

Using my copious amount of notes from this week as my evidence, I really felt that we covered a lot of ground this week. We started the class by talking about conceptual tools being learned in the context of their use. We also talked about knowledge being inert, because it is taken out of context. Through our discussion, I realized that when you introduce technology to the culture of people who use it and situate it correctly in the culture of their use and engage the students in authentic activity, that is when you have true enculturation- as long as you are doing this consistently, not just one class. This idea of enculturation also relates to the idea of cognitive apprenticeship. Basically, cognitive apprenticeship is where a “master” of a skill teaches the skill to a novice or person who is less knowledgeable. This, in a lot of ways reminds me of how we as teachers, have to do student teaching in order to become a professional ourselves. While we do a lot of teaching ourselves, we always have another person (master) there who is leading us in the correct direction. This is really the closest that I have ever come to cognitive apprenticeship that I am aware of.

We also talked about modeling (I do), coaching (we do), and fading (you do) approach. I use this method all the time with my students and it really seems to go well with what we have previously learned about the ZPD. Because, as we know- knowledge is the intersection of activity, culture, and tools, and knowledge can be symbolic, conceptual, physical, etc. This point ties in the design principal for this week as well, which is that good learning designs situate knowledge in the context of its use- combining authentic activity, conceptual tools, and culture. As I just said, all of those points really go together. You can’t have learning without the kids actively using what they have learned in the context of an activity. We also need to work harder to make sure that we are enculturating the kids- to teach lots of different opportunities to learn from other cultures- even if that culture is just a different expert in a field you are teaching. Thinking of enculturation as ethnicity is not the correct idea. It is more akin to like-minded people learning together, like when I have my countywide librarians meetings where we discuss pertinent issues that librarians face.

After we had most of our discussion, we also talked about the reading from last week- including the ABC’s of Activity- which are authentic activities, background knowledge/building, constructing activities (making and doing it), and sharing. Because, as we talked about none of these things are sufficient without the others, particularly when we talk about background knowledge. IT is necessary but not sufficient in explaining all. Constructing is usually best done collaboratively (like many teachers do on a team), and you must share because they learn from each other and get feedback to check for understanding, especially from someone in the culture they are learning about. The ABC’s also had a way for teachers to engage their students in- pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, technological knowledge, and then quite separately we have doing knowledge. The way that we connect the doing with the rest is design knowledge. We as teachers also tend to know a lot from experience which explains that the doing knowledge is often over in its own little island away from the other knowledge forms.

As far as how this all effects me, I think that it is way too easy in getting caught up in the teaching of something, that we can sometimes forget the true progession of concepts. We need an activity, sure- but we need the background first! Sometimes it seems like we as teachers can put the cart before the horse, and I like to think that I do not do this, but in talking about what makes a good design, I think that it has made me more aware of the succession of events and even that I need to give the kids more time to share what they have learned with each other and me! 

Once again, sorry for the summary to those reading – but I really do find it the most helpful to the way that I learn. I can find out what I think and process it all and also make a summary of what I have learned in a cohesive way. Thanks for reading!

Mind in Society Round Two: Vygotsky... in the Zone?

Once again, I think I will start with the reading and then hash my way over to the design principal we wrote in class. I find it the most helpful to see what I think by reviewing all of my thoughts from class and reading and then blurting them out here (sorry for those reading!). This is the easiest way for me, personally to learn.

So, to get started, I will start with the background of Vygotsky’s life- because I think this is why we had Piaget as the “gold” standard for as long as we did in education. Vygotsky is a Russian psychologist and his prime time for writing and publishing was during the Marxist period and while it was a very intellectual environment, it was an environment where they were focused in the means of production and he was focusing on thought and cognition- this seemingly did not mesh well with the theories the Marxists had in mind because his theories were pretty well buried for many years – especially in the US. This really is unfortunate because I personally believe that his theories are much more realistic for education than some of the other psychologists that I have read from. Going off of this, Vygotsky has several main themes/ideas throughout his work. He says we have tools that are symbols and signs from where all thought arises. One example of thought is language that we use to express ourselves. Vygotsky also studied speech. For instance, when we learn speech and use symbols this leads us to think because language=thought and thought=language. No more than me typing this right now, I am using my tools of writing to see what my thoughts actually are on the topic. This begs the question: what thoughts does speech promote? Perception, attention, categorizing, discriminating among ideas, and memory. We talked in class about how perception also has a lot to do with our own experiences- like how a tribe in Africa only has color words for light and dark, or an Inuit tribe has twenty something different words for snow. These are just two examples of how perception shapes the symbols we use- even language! Our development hinges upon experiences and thus the tools and symbols we use relate back to what we have surrounding us.

We then went on to talk about what tools go with print: things like cross-indexing, logical, linear, sequential, and abstract. These things are the tools that help us meet with the world. They help us to shape thought in a written format. These things are related but not exactly the same that relate to speech. It is a bit different of a process, but still ways to figure out what we think.

We then talked about all of the different book topics that were really important in Mind in Society. Some of the more important topics that we talked about and used for making our Vygotsky maps are things like: symbols and speech, tools, Zone of Proximal Development, the role of others (experts), play, nature and nurture interacting, internalization, and higher psychological thinking. So we started looking at the ZPD and we talked about how up until you get to the Zone, there is nothing, just the possibilities and readiness to learn. With help and modeling you get into the Zone and then you come out the other side to do it independently. Vygtosky says this is not biology the ZPD process is readiness and culture. He says play=learning and learning=play. Play is using what you know to experiment and manipulate your tools to learn and find out what the “rules” are. Like in little kids playing house- they say things like “Dad does that not Mom or Mommy does the cooking” they are playing to understand they way the world works. I had never thought about play in that way before, I never really thought about the WHY behind kids needing to play.

The next thing we did in class was we wrote our next design principal, which is the learning principal. It reads: “Good learning designs engage students in social play activities at the edge of their knowledge and understanding using symbolic tools to develop and internalize meaningful thought.” I think this phrase basically just sums up all of what I said in the past 500 words in a matter of a sentence, which is really impressive. It talks about the relationship between play activities advancing knowledge and learning, and it also talks about using tools to get to higher order thinking and meaningful thought. This is literally the crux of what we talked about for the past two weeks while studying Vygotsky.

So, my personal takeaway from this whole topic is that kids are given specific tools like language and play to express themselves.This is not magic or biology, it is wholly dependent upon their own personal development. This is why some kids talk early and some talk later in the development process. It also makes sense why play is so important to kids. They are not just merely playing, they are thinking, processing, and using higher order thinking to figure out what they know. I think that as educators, we also need to apply this to what we do. We need to let the kids play with the information that we are giving them. Making them do things solo and without the exchange of the tool of language between themselves can literally stunt their development. I personally will be thinking about this as I go on and make sure to include play among the other activities I have my kids do. Basically, we cannot separate learning from speech or play. We speak and play to learn and we learn while playing and talking to share ideas. Really, it makes sense when you think about it. It's why we talk to ourselves when we are making a new recipe. It's why little kids babble at the end of their day- we talk to make sense of the world around us. We play to learn new things! It literally is the most basic idea in the world when you put it that way, but it really is not something we often think about. Three cheers to Vygotsky for making me realize some of what IS actually going on in the minds of the kiddos I teach! (Pictures above are: play, talk, learn!)