Presentation Zen and The Blessings of Science

Posted on January 16, 2011 by boadams1

Because I make numerous presentations* in my line of work, I am committed to kaizen – continuous improvement – in this area. Garr Reynolds is one of my virtual mentors in the area of story-telling design. His recent post, “Science & the importance of having a sense of wonder,” led me to this TEDxTokyo talk by Ken Moji. In his ten minutes, Mogi-san reminds us of some critical elements of learning: a sense of wonder, curiosity, explanation, exploration. His concluding lesson is tremendously powerful! What a strong reminder for us pursuing the science of teaching, the science of learning, and “presentation zen” in the classroom.

* By “presentation,” I mean being an organizer, coordinator, and facilitator of ideas. As much as possible, more and more, I try to avoid simply standing and delivering.

Achievement-Action: #20minwms

Posted on January 8, 2011 by boadams1

When I logged into iGoogle this Saturday morning, I was greeted by this image:

Achievement is certainly preceded by action. Yesterday, on Friday, I was inspired by the ACTION a sizeable handfull of teachers took when they embarked on the “20 minute experiment.” Explained more fully in the permalink above, Jill Gough encouraged a number of us to engage in an experiment that would synthesize: 1) some of David Souza’s brain research on primacy and recency, 2) formative assessment, and 3) tweeting as a means of forum discussion. Among several others, a ninth-grade physics teacher agreed to participate and became immediately involved. He provides a summary of how he implemented the experiment at Quantum Progress. Throughout the day, participating teachers would take a brief “commercial break” 20 minutes into class and ask students to summarize what they had learned so far. Together the class would craft a 140-character tweet to summarize their learning, and they would post to the teacher’s Twitter account with the hashtag #20minwms. As the tweets appeared, we could all see what was being learned in the participating classes. We even received a spirited and curious inquiry about what we were doing from a Director of Teaching and Learning at a neighboring school. As the day progressed, the number of involved teachers grew – a snow ball was born!

Can you imagine the potential of this process to serve as formative assessment for teachers and students? To connect the learning that occurs between and among classes? To break down the walls that exist between classes? To serve as a window into learning for parents? To archive an essence of what was happening during a day of school? To…

It is about learning, isn’t it?! It takes action, it requires some risk taking, and it certainly is fun when we do it together!

8-31-10 Malone Dining Room

Posted on August 31, 2010 by boadams1

Director of Business and Finance Wendy Barnhart inquired about ideas pertaining to a study of Malone Dining Hall…

How could organization and flow change for greater efficiency?
How could lines be diminished?
Could the capacity and/or flow change to allow for more schedule options?

I asked…

Sent: 8/31/2010 5:08:30 PM

Subject: Fwd: Re: Cafeteria study

“Any chance of students helping/directing this study of the flow and capacity of Malone? Great project-based, place-based learning opportunity. A REAL problem to deal with that matters to them!”

Mrs. Barnhart liked the idea of student participation and study. Anyone interested?!

Homework by Choice

Posted on August 31, 2010 by boadams1

This first semester of 2010-11, Jill Gough and I are co-facilitating an eighth-grade course called Synergy 8. In brief, Synergy 8 is a inquiry-based, community problem-solving, persuasive communication course. For several days, we have been working with our 24 students to determine which archive/communication tool we will use for the class. Journaling, class discussion, data mining, and polling have been steps in the process. In the last two class days, we have been experimenting a bit with Grou.ps as a tool. Ms. Gough and I have assigned no homework with respect to Grou.ps. However, students are choosing to post blogs there, form groups, write to wikis, and comment on videos. They are messaging each other and giving the chat feature a try. Two students have attempted to invite their parents to see what they are doing on the site. The posted work, in most cases, is high-level, in my opinion, all things considered. Why are students choosing to assign themselves homework? Some teachers believe that students are only motivated by the currency of grades and the authority behind homework. Perhaps, as they started in the world before school, children are motivated by LEARNING. Maybe we teachers have habituated them to the seeming rewards of grades and check marks for completed homework. Maybe we don’t give children and students enough credit – the real kind. Maybe we need to make the learning more fun, more relevant, more engaging, and more enticing.

8-31-10 A Question About Schedule

Posted on August 31, 2010 by boadams1

Does our daily schedule allow for deep learning, especially when the class time is chunked as 50-55 minute blocks? What if we wanted to explore the campus, work in the organic garden, develop a complex project? Would a double-period allow for more experiential learning?

What about pass times? Can we get where we need to go and do what we need to do in 5 minutes? What if pass times were 10 minutes? How could we make this work and not lose instructional time?