Tag Archives: Integrated studies

PROCESS POST: Ludwick Marishane and #PBL – “What’s stopping you?”

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… one question I have for the audience today is, on the gravel roads of Limpopo, with an allowance of 50 rand a week, I came up with a way for the world not to bathe. What’s stopping you? (Applause)

What is stopping us? Ludwick Marishane did so much more than just come up with a way for the world not to bathe. He figured out a way to battle trachoma and fight disease-based blindness in under-resourced areas.

I believe strongly that school should be more community-issue-problem-solving based. As Daniel Pink explained in Drive, we are motivated most strongly when we feel higher degrees of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Purpose has long been a question driver in schools. “When will I ever use this?” “Why are we learning this?” School could live more deliberately at this nexus of desired relevance and purpose and problems craving solutions. Learners want to maintain choice at pursuing things that matter to and interest them. By pursuing such passions, while the hard work can often feel playful, we develop deep mastery.

If you watched the five-minute TED talk from Ludwick Marishane, do you think he got the following:

  • growing understanding of science, perhaps in the integrated fields of chemistry and biology
  • increased cultural thoughtfulness and empathy
  • strengthening communication skills in writing business plans, patents, grant proposals, etc., as well as enhancing oral communications with presentations, sales pitches, etc.
  • heightening proficiency in mathematics, quantitative and qualitative statistics, and application of mathematical reasoning
  • developing sense that he is a creative and critical-thinking problem solver, with agency to make a difference in the world now
  • expanding appreciation for socio-economic and psychological dimensions of getting a solution to market
  • understanding the necessity of genuine collaboration to combat big, audacious goals

I think he got all of the above and so much more. And what he is giving may far outweigh what he is getting. I think he might help more than 8 million people affected by trachoma. And he developed DryBath because he wanted to figure out a way that he would not have to take a bath himself.

I can imagine elementary, middle, and high schoolers engaging in such starts-as-a-selfish-and-seemingly-ridiculous project. I can see them spending time in more time-concentrated laboratories of integrated learning, rather than interrupting their flow because of bells set to 50 minutes and disciplines sub-divided by cinderblock walls. I can see them solving big problems and growing as engaged, empathetic, empowered citizens. I can see them practicing the skills and learning the content that will serve them, and the world, most dearly in the coming decades.

Some schools might want to make wholesale change to such a model. Others might want to revamp their curriculum and instruction so that “lab” problem solving represents 50% of the day and more traditional classes represent the other 50%. Still others may want to discern how to incorporate such community-issues-problem-solving courses into just 20-25% of the school day or week. Whatever the ration, I believe the students and the world would benefit from the increased and enhanced concentration on dealing with real community issues – issues within one’s school, wider neighborhood, city, state, nation, or world.

As I’ve written this post, in less than 15 minutes, I’ve imagined a sort of “kit” that could help a school get started…

  1. Alan November’s book, Who Owns the Learning?
  2. Suzie Boss’s book, Bringing Innovation to Schools
  3. Will Richardson’s e-book, Why School?
  4. frog design’s Collective Action Toolkit

In fact, if you are already convinced that schools are, or should be, doing such community-issues-problem-solving based learning, then you could use just #4 to help you get started.

As Marishane challenged us all, “What’s stopping you?”

College and university aspirations as a piece of pedagogical master planning

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Reviewing the Duke Forward website, home base for Duke’s $3.25 billion capital campaign, I was most struck by two statements:

But we cannot be satisfied with methods of teaching, or learning, that were born out of different needs and different realities. In a world where technology is reshaping the very definitions of communication, education, and knowledge, universities must adapt, preserving the best of our traditions but also transform­ing inherited approaches to education and research to meet today’s challenges.

The university of the future will be defined as much by collaboration as it is by individual accomplishment, and as much by the opportunity to engage with problems as it is by the accumulation of knowledge.Deeply con­structive partnerships across areas of expertise, between researchers and practitioners, and among students and faculty of diverse perspectives must be the norm rather than the exception.

In such an environment, the walls are low and the aspirations high, the solutions nimble and the breakthroughs profound. (emphasis added)

– from President Brodhead’s Overview

And…

Through the campaign, we’re seeking support to strengthen curricular and co-curricular programs that give students throughout Duke’s 10 schools the opportunity to develop their talents by solving real problems. (emphasis added)

– from Boundaries Not Included page

If schools declare that we work to prepare students for college and for life, then how are we studying and implementing such innovations ourselves? How are we lowering walls, crossing borders and boundaries of subject and expertise, and engaging real-life problems?

What if a content-centric curriculum and silo-ed departments and walled philosophies disadvantage student and faculty learners for the future at our doorsteps?

[Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a Blue Devil, undergraduate class of 1993. Duke was the only undergraduate school to which I applied because it was the only place I wanted to go since I was 7 years old. Go Duke!

Of course, I would love to see Duke’s “pedagogical master plan” for all of this – those plans with the equivalent, intricate detail of analogous architectural plans and engineering schema.]

I dream a school…that plays matchmaker between world issues and adolescent energy

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Do you know about Innocentive? They match innovation needs with innovation providers – that whole demand and supply thing. In addition to doing great work, they also make a great metaphor for what school could be.

I believe schools could be structured this way.

Adolescent energy, resourcefulness, and desire to engage relevance
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Issues of the world
_________________

Engaging curriculum that positively influences the world

Imagine the F=ma implications, in a social justice application of Newton’s Law, if a majority of schools employed the collective mass of our students…in integrated studies, project-based learning formats…to make huge dents in world issues. The size of that “additive amoeba” (think collecting broken up play-dough into one mass), could really make a difference. [Yes, I want to embed Kiran Bir Sethi’s TED talk right here, but I’m not gonna do it. Gonna use Jamie Drummond’s instead.]

I dream a school that crowd-sources with myriad other schools to impact the world now. Imagine the power of that!

———-

Related resource:

What if schools learned from tourist spots, museums, and other sightseeing locations? #WhatIfWeekly #GroundedCampus

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Schools could learn from tourist spots, museums, and other sightseeing locations
(a 3:02 podcast by Bo Adams)

[The link above will take you to a podcast that I created on Garageband. A transcript of the podcast is pasted below (please excuse conventions errors, as I only made the script to record the podcast!). This marks my first foray into recording a podcast on Garageband, which I have been wanting to learn for quite some time. Today, I learned by doing, and I spent about 90 minutes crafting the podcast. Interestingly, I spent about three times that long trying to figure out how to embed the podcast with a media player directly into this blog. Still haven’t discovered how to do that. Any and all feedback and commentary is welcome – on the content of the podcast, as well as on the production of the podcast. I am learning, and you might be my best teacher for how to do all of this better…from the thinking about schools to the creating of a multimedia podcast that can be embedded in WordPress. Thanks for reading, listening, and viewing.]

Schools could learn and integrate a lot from tourist spots, museums, and sightseeing locations. For example, just take those multi-media, information boards that aquariums, historical sites, and zoos use. I can imagine student-generated information boards – full of pictures and narrative descriptions – in several locations on a campus…explaining the history of a building, the flora and fauna counts of a nearby woods or stream, the recent sports news highlighting the athletics teams of the school. These information boards could possess some static information, but they could also utilize QR codes so that different classes from year to year could update the more dynamic information. They could include short podcasts like the QR codes at Rock City – one at each of about 50 stops along the enchanted trail.

Students could label shrubs and trees on campus with botanical descriptor signs. These could include QR codes, too. Can’t you imagine a video pieced together by a collaborative of students in which various teams trace and track the seasonal lives of adopted flora. Through something like a time-elapse video, viewers could see the maturing of a tree compressed from years into just seconds. Student could narrate the short mini-features and update the QR codes at the signs from year to year.

On a weekend trip to Chattanooga, TN, I was also impressed by the sidewalks at the North Shore, just across the Walnut Street pedestrian bridge. Dance steps had been included in the concrete pours, and our vacation group enjoyed frequent stops during our stroll to learn the Cha Cha, the Waltz, and the Foxtrot. What if student groups designed the walkways at a school with such similar action-generating artifacts? I can imagine a student committee ideating, designing, and processing through how to make such a concept reality on the pathways that crisscross a school’s campus.

Other student committees could curate special exhibits based on their research and creations. At the Tennessee Aquarium, we marveled at a small exhibit comparing various turtle shells to a host of architectural designs and features. Students are perfectly capable of doing this typically-adult work. Through the projects, students could integrate learning and understanding that traditionally gets siloed and subdivided into departmentalized subjects. What’s more, the student committees would learn invaluable design, communication, and curatorial skills as they readied their public displays and exhibition details.

Tourist spots, museums, zoos, and other sightseeing spots seem expert at getting us to interact with what we are seeing and learning. School campuses could be such interactive destinations, and students could create, design, and implement the possibilities.

Also, @occam98 sent me this fabulous and closely related article:

The Grounded Curriculum
How can our courses and teaching capitalize on the benefits of a physical campus?

By James M. Lang

Walking Myself and My Dog to School, or Braiding NPR and a Cup of Joe

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I’ve gone back to school. Well, at the very least, you might say that I am enrolled in a course. In some places, one might see the class title listed as “Multitasking 101.” In other catalogs, one might discover the course name as “Mornings with Lucy.” Or, it might make the board as “Mix-alot Podcasts and a Cup o’ Joe.” You see, I’m not sure what to call the class – I am designing it myself. Here’s the backbone of the offering:

  • Task #1: In the early morning, I take my pointer-hound mix on a walk. Her name is Lucy, and her whole body wags in anticipation. If I weren’t fearful of pulling some infrequently used muscle, I might wag my whole body, too. I love our walks, and we modulate between a stroll and a mild cantor for 30-90 minutes.
  • Task #2: I enjoy a travel mug of house-brewed coffee. Leash in one hand, mug in the other.
  • Task #3: Listen to a podcast on my iPhone. I have this great set of comfortable ear phones. Beats they are not. I think they cost $9.99 at Target, but they wrap ergonomically around my ear and provide some extraordinary listening pleasure.

All three task-strands weave together to make quite a braid. A bit of cardio in the pre-sunrise hours, a socially-accepted stimulant that thrills the tastebuds, time with my beloved, four-legged companion, and a chance to listen and think. Shear bliss. And not the ignorance is bliss kind, either. Real bliss.

A few weeks ago, at a workshop, a co-participant alluded to some research that claims that multitasking damages our IQs. I think my month long experiment could do some damage to this claim. I believe my IQ has increased during this morning line-braiding. I haven’t even tripped or mis-stepped, but, mind you, I haven’t added chewing gum to the equation. That would be the honors level course, I feel certain.

What am I listening to? What’s on the ear-syllabi? Here’s a smattering:

TED Radio Hour on NPR

Planet Money

This American Life

While enjoying this morning syllabus of self-directed learning for the past month, I am also re-reading Michael Michalko’s Creative Thinkering, which tackles as its thesis the nature of creativity to be the combining and integrating of seemingly unrelated things. So, as I walk Lucy, drink my coffee, and listen to the chosen podcast(s) of the day, I play some of the games and thought experiments listed in Michalko’s work – I try to find and create connections among what I am listening to and what I have listened to in the past. I try to think of Education and Schooling through the lenses of the morning listening. For instance, I have wondered lately how School is like the health care issue, I have wondered how School is like the economic crises in Europe, and I have re-imagined Education through the lenses of many of the interwoven TED talks on the TED Radio Hour.

I am having a blast, and I am learning a ton. I wonder…What if we built in such self-directed discovery into the typical school week or school day? Minus the coffee of course. I just don’t know how I feel about kids drinking coffee. Do we allow for, support, and create enough space and time for young learners to decide on their own paths of schooling? Do we empower them to weave in these lessons with what they are directed to learn in school? How can self-directed learning methods inform the ways we think about and structure schools of the future? How are we hybridizing what school has been and what school could be? Are we rotating our crops and fields so that we continue producing good (brain)food? [Okay, that metaphor just jumped in from nowhere, but Michalko has encouraged me not to backspace out those thoughts while I am thinking.]

Have a good “walk” today! Where are you going to school? What are you learning? How are you multitasking and thinking creatively? I would love to read or listen to what you have to share!