Tag: Learning

Bookmarked ‘We don’t mollycoddle them’: The preschools letting kids spend hours in the dirt (ABC News)

While there’s a huge appetite among educators for bush kinder programs, Elliott cautions against seeing nature as just another playground.

For bush kinder to be truly meaningful for children, she says, it must focus on leading them towards a deeper, more sustainable relationship with the natural world.

“It’s about the relationship between humans and between humans and the Earth,” she says.

Lisa Clausen investigates the world of the bush kinder program and the potential for problem solving and the appreciation for the environment through outdoor learning. This feels like it fits with Brendon Hyndman’s research into the power of play, while others such as Narissa Leung, Adrian Camm and John Johnston have explored the topic. Sadly, such experiences of getting outdoors are often restricted to things such as school camps.

via Weekend Reads

Replied to The Uncharted Waters of Learner-Driven Online Learning – Etale – Exploring Futures & Innovations in Education with Bernard Bull (etale.org)

Instead of calling it an online classroom, what if we called it an online learning collaborative, remove learning co-op, a virtual mentoring platform, a networked learning platform, a digital gym for the mind, or an online group coaching forum? Each of these will lead us to think about the experience and possibilities in new ways.

I liked your discussion of metaphors Bernard. Your point about an online learning collaborative reminds me of Dave White’s post about coalescent spaces.
Replied to Fit2Learn: Learning How to Learn | Silvia Tolisano- Langwitches Blog (langwitches.org)

This is a potential roadmap (among many others)… a guide to getting fit to learn how to learn in (only a few weeks away from) the third decade of the 21st century and to teach and educate children who will live into the 22nd century!

This is a great provocation Silvia. I have been wondering about what changes when teachers leave the classroom and enter different roles. Clearly there are no longer children, but I think that sometimes the challenge can be to stay ‘Fit2Learn’ as you put it. I particularly like how you break learning down into the different aspects, including mental training, physical training, process, fuel, injury and events. It reminds me of Tom Whitby’s adage: “If we are to better educate our kids, we need first to better educate their educators.”
Replied to A 9-Stage Continuum of Teacher-Centered to Learner-Led Classrooms & Communities – Etale – Mission-Minded Innovation (etale.org)

I’m sure that I missed other important distinctions, but my main goal here was to acknowledge and reflect upon a level of nuance that gets missed when we simply contrast teacher-centered versus student-centered learning. While breaking things into these nine categories was an exercise in organizing my own thinking as much as anything else, perhaps others will find it useful as well.

Bernard, this is a useful provocation to not only reflect upon practice, but to identify some of the possibilities associated with different positions.
Liked 4. Schrödinger’s undead cat (steve-wheeler.co.uk)

So what are you going to do about it? Lock the child up in a box? Or in other words, regularly test them to the point they begin to hate and fear school because of all the stress it causes them? Testing is a bit like uprooting a plant every other week to check on how much it has grown. The quantum indeterminacy of education is that you can either regularly test children, or you can stand back and let them grow. We need to think outside the box. Assessment can be done without stress, because there are many alternatives to testing – and there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Liked Generalise, don’t specialise: why focusing too narrowly is bad for us (the Guardian)

Learning about the advantages of breadth and delayed specialisation has changed the way I see myself and the world. The research pertains to every stage of life, from the development of children in maths, music and sports, to students fresh out of college trying to find their way, to midcareer professionals in need of a change and would-be retirees looking for a new vocation after moving on from their previous one.

The challenge we all face is how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivises or even demands hyperspecialisation. While it is true that there are areas that require individuals with Tiger’s precocity and clarity of purpose, as complexity increases – as technology spins the world into vaster webs of interconnected systems in which each individual only sees a small part – we also need more Rogers: people who start broad and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives while they progress. People with range.

Adapted from Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World by David Epstein, published by Macmillan
Liked The Allure of ‘Matrix-Style Learning’ (Hack Education)

Science aside, let’s think about culture and society. What’s the lure of “instant learning” and in particular “instant learning” via a technological manipulation of the brain? This is certainly connected to the push for “efficiency” in education and education technology. But again, why would we want learning to be fast and cheap? What does that say about how we imagine and more importantly how we value the process of learning?

via HEWN
Replied to Expand Your Horizons (Daily-Ink & Pair-a-dimes un-post-ed)

We are so lucky to live in an era where learning something new is always within our reach. Not just home repair, but new skills and new approaches to the way we think, learn, work, and play.

What are you currently trying to do that you couldn’t do before? How are you expanding your horizons?

I remember when I was growing up I would prize the guitar tabs that my music teacher would write out for me. Now, I search for the chords/tabs or watch various tutorials on YouTube, such as Brian Martin’s Easy Guitar Tutorials. Although I do not get the feedback that comes with having a teacher, it means that I can keep on learning.

This all reminds me of anywhere, anytime learning, as well as Amy Burvall’s focus on the power of the mobile device as the ultimate learning tool. It makes me wonder about the move to ban devices.

I am also left wondering if this penchant for learning when I want impedes deeper learning over time that sometimes comes through frustration with the unknown or ‘productive struggle‘.

Anyway, enough from me for now.

P.S. Enjoying your daily blogs David

Liked http://edte.ch/blog/2019/04/26/learning-alignment-model/ by Tom Barrett (edte.ch)

The recommended curriculum derives from experts in the field. Almost every discipline-based professional group has promulgated curriculum standards for its field.

The written curriculum is found in the documents produced by the state, the school system, the school, and the classroom teacher, specifying what is to be taught.

The supported curriculum is the one for which there are complimentary instructional materials available, such as textbooks, software, and multimedia resources.

The tested curriculum is the one embodied in tests developed by the state, school system, and teachers. The term “test” is used broadly here to include standardized tests, competency tests, and performance assessments.

The taught curriculum is the one that teachers actually deliver. Researchers have pointed out that there is enormous variation in the nature of what is actually taught, despite the superficial appearance of uniformity (Gehrke, Knapp, & Sirotnik, 1992).

The learned curriculum is the bottom-line curriculum—what students learn. Clearly, it is the most important of all.

Bookmarked Youth Spies and Curious Elders – Austin Kleon (Austin Kleon)

On holding onto your curiosity as you age.

I love the term ‘curious elder’:

John Waters is what I call a Curious Elder — someone who manages to retain their curiosity as they age and stays interested in what young people are up to. The curious elder isn’t interested in judging youth, they’re interested in learning from them.

As a parent and an educator, I think that there is a danger of understanding, rather than “revelling in the mystification”.

I remember when I taught music I would start each weekly lesson with a listening diary where we would reflect upon a different piece of music chosen by a student. It was a fascinating opportunity.

Bookmarked Ten Lessons I Learned While Teaching Myself to Code (The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss)
In light on Clive Thompson’s new book, he reflects on the ten lessons associated with learning to code:

  1. The online world is your friend. Start there.
  2. Don’t stress over what language to pick.
  3. Code every day.
  4. Automate your life.
  5. Prepare for constant, grinding frustration.
  6. Build things. Build lots of things.
  7. “View Source”: Take other people’s code, pick it apart, and reuse it.
  8. Build things for you—code you need and want.
  9. Learn how to learn.
  10. Reach out to other coders.

Two points that stood out to me from Thompson’s was coding every day and doing so with purpose. I have been doing quite a bit with Google Sheets lately. I find myself needing to relearn things after leaving things for a few weeks. Repetition is important.

I was also reminded of Richard Olsen’s post on why coding is the vanguard for modern learning.

Liked Personal and personalised learning (steve-wheeler.co.uk)

During the plenary session I was asked by a delegate to explain the difference between ‘personal learning’ and ‘personalised learning’. I explained by pointing out the marvellous structure of the
Jerónimos Monastery, just across the road from the conference centre. Having visited there previously, I could see a useful analogy. Personal learning, I explained, is walking across the road and doing an ad hoc tour of the buildings and artefacts to see what I could learn about the history and culture of Jerónimos Hiring a personal guide who knows a lot more about the history and culture of the place, and touring it with him/her would be personalised learning. I would be scaffolded in my discovery of the place, and I might learn a little more than if I simply wandered around on my own.

Steve Wheeler differentiates between personal and personalised learning. This is different to Graham Wegner’s discussion of personalised versus personalized learning.
Liked Is Your Child An Orchid Or A Dandelion? Unlocking The Science Of Sensitive Kids by Sam Briger, Seth Kelley (KQED)

I think that this is probably the most difficult parenting task in raising an orchid child. The parent of an orchid child needs to walk this very fine line between, on the one hand, not pushing them into circumstances that are really going to overwhelm them and make them greatly fearful, but, on the other hand, not protecting them so much that they don’t have experiences of mastery of these kinds of fearful situations.

via Ian O’Byrne
Liked Love what you do in front of the kids in your life by Austin Kleon (austinkleon.com)

Want your kids to read more? Let them see you reading every day.

Want your kids to practice an instrument? Let them see you practicing an instrument.

Want your kids to spend more time outside? Let them see you without your phone.

There’s no guarantee that your kids will copy your modeling, but they’ll get a glimpse of an engaged human.

Replied to What is digital literacy? by Ian O’Byrne (wiobyrne.com)

What are some ways that students can best learn digital literacy skills?

Thank you for the mention Ian. I think the best ways to learn (or teach) digital literacies are through experiences. The problem with this – and I guess a lot of learning when I think about it – is that there is not much room for mistakes. I wonder if this is what you were trying to capture with your post on anonymity. This is why I like the idea of starting out with closed spaces, before moving into the open.
Liked Learn In Public (swyx.io | Learn In Public)

People notice genuine learners. They’ll want to help you. Don’t tell them, but they just became your mentors. This is very important: Pick up what they put down. Think of them as offering up quests for you to complete. When they say “Anyone willing to help with __ __?” you’re that kid in the first row with your hand already raised. These are senior engineers, some of the most in-demand people in tech. They’ll spend time with you, 1 on 1, if you help them out (p.s. and there’s always something they want help on). You can’t pay for this stuff. They’ll teach you for free. Most people don’t see what’s right in front of them. But not you.

Another interesting take on why to blog.
Replied to Picking and Learning by Robert Schuetz, (Nocking the Arrow)

For those of us concerned about our advancing years, taking up a hobby, learning new skills promotes mental health and longevity. Some folks work on crossword puzzles or play Soduko, others paint, write, or plant gardens. My commitment involves six strings, ten fingers, two eyes, two ears, and one hungry mind.

What I have learnt recently is the importance of learning something beyond education. I have been doing some thinking about writing a book about covers. In part I am interested in the process and what I can learn about myself. I really enjoyed Ryan Holiday’s reflections on the journey.