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Teaching with passion: passionate learning

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Emily Pilloton shows just how an individual’s passion can influence and bring about significant change on a local, regional and national level. For me, this talk summarises what is really means to be passionate about a subject or activity. Her focus here is on how the power of teaching design can bring about positive engagement from individuals and communities. But I reflected on the fact that it is her passion for what she does that brings about real change above all else.

After I watched this talk the first time, I made a promise to myself to stop being apologetic about being SO into all-things-learning. It is hard but I really think it is working.

Whereas once I would introduce a video clip, a resource or a book to a group of teachers with the self-deprecating mantra, “…it’s because I have no life that I find these things interesting…” I now simply say, “Watch this, it’s really great. I think you’ll enjoy it., I did”. Or words to that effect.

I love to be inspired by people, young and old. It is for this reason that I watch so many people speak online or at conferences or read what they write. The inspiration I experience often comes not from the subject that they talk about but from the passion with which they talk about it. In this way, I manage to get my regular fix of inspiration from a diverse range of people from a diverse range of fields. I also know a lot more about quantum physics than I ever thought I would, but that’s another story.

What this talk does is show how passion can change not only your own life but the lives of those around us. Sir Ken Robinson talks about this very subject in his book, “The Element’. Perhaps if we have the courage to teach with such passion, we will also be and see just such changes occurring around us.

Collaboration: as with all learning, is too important to be left to chance

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Jane McGonigal presents a great argument here that attempts to demonstrate the potential force for good that could exist within games-playing. Games like World of Warcraft require a commitment on the part of the participants to collaborate with their fellow players in order to achieve their goals.

For me, this brings me back to considering the power of games-dynamics in themselves and of the need for students to get as many opportunities as possible to learn together, in groups. The structure and integral components that underpin interactive games-playing might be translated into a some form of taxonomy of learning design. Here’s a very rough draft of what it might look like:

 

  • Identifies what needs to be done in order to achieve goals
  • Recognises that attainment of goals cannot be done independently of others
  • Identifies who and/or what can help in the attainment of such goals
  • Adapts own behaviour so as to foster collaboration from others
  • Collaborates with others to achieve own goals
  • Works effectively with others to achieve own goals
  • Is prepared to offer collaborative expertise to achieve goals of others
  • Recognises that working with others is more effective than working independently
  • Actively seeks out further collaborative opportunities with others

 

And so on.

And what if we created a game-scenario that was intended to solve some of the world’s greatest problems and handed this over to our students? How might this encourage learners to engage with the wider world and begin a process of problem solving from which innovative solutions might emerge? We know it works, after all. Consider the way in which the human gene was finally coded, or the creation of WIkipedia or…well, you know what I mean.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that we should ditch the curriculum and get students to start playing WoW. What this talk does make me think about, however, is how collaborative skills need to be deliberately practised just as much as skills in calculus, research or reading. As I’ve said before in posts and I’m writing about in other forms at the moment, if we can design learning in such a way that it offers engaging opportunities for students to mindfully practise the skills required to collaborate, then surely that’s one step closer to their readiness to both give and take from the world everything it has to offer?

Other TED Talks on related to this and that have similar connections to learning include Seth Priebatsch and Tom Chatfield.

Policy & Practice: Tread softly on their dreams

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“Sir Ken Robinson: Part Two”. This talk follows up Sir Ken Robinson’s original TED talk with a call for a revolution, rather than reformation in education. I particularly like his request that we ‘disenthrall’ ourselves from that which we have become accustomed. The original text of the Lincoln speech he quotes is worth a read, and possible a wordle. 

All in all, with this talk, I suggest you just sit back, watch, listen and reflect. Oh, and don’t forget to make yourself a cup of tea to drink while you watch. And then go to www.sirkenrobinson.com to check out his video responses to tweeted questions about education. Oh, and then read some of his books.

And no, I’m not on commission. I promise.

Here’s those fabulous cognitive media peeps again. A 10 minute animation of his address on the same topic. 

Engaging learners: games dynamics & lesson design

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Seth Priebatsch gives an enthusiastic talk about the way in which business is learning from games dynamics. For me, from the start of his energetic talk, I simply substitute ‘learning design’ for ‘business’ and keep on listening. I write a lot more about this in my book but for now, this talk gives a great illustration of the way in which humans are engaging in Web 2.0 or rather, how Web 2.0 is encouraging engagement from humans.

There’s much here to consider, but the highlights include his explanation of how a simple progress bar can be incorporated into daily activities to encourage us to finish them. I’m working with a school who are doing just this in a project with some gifted and talented learners to encourage them to take the time to actively reflect on their learning and complete a personal learning blog. Before it becomes a habit, we need to practice and get good at an activity. When we do this, we start to experience a greater, deeper sense of achievement and we want to go back back for more. And that’s what we want. A learning addiction. That’s what I want, anyway! There’s some great ideas here that can easily be incorporated into the way in which we design learning. 

Nice if learning became as big as Nike or Adidas or Nintendo or Apple or…well, you get what I mean.

Digital Learners: when potential meets potential

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Patte Maes and Pranav Mistry (who has a fantastically designed website btw) from MIT shared this presentation of their work from the MIT lab. This is a great example of what www.TED.com provide us with; an insight into a world of cutting edge research and insightful thinking before it gets into the mainstream. I love this about TED. We get to see some of the raw stuff as well as some of the polished, ready-for-distribution stuff. But at its heart is the ‘Sharing of Ideas’. And isn’t that what schools are all about, after all?

Anyway, we recently used this film as part of a project with a cohort of ‘able but quiet’ year 8 students from 9 participating schools and they loved it. We asked them to research and then present a response to ‘What will the life of an average 15 year old be like in 2025?’. It was a long term project run collaboratively over 7 months. The students ran their own research groups and organised their meeting and deadlines without intervention from their adult facilitator. The effect of this particular film was to really open up their thinking and freed them up to get very creative about what they suggested might be invented by the time 2025 came around. As teachers too, it reinforced for us the fundamental need to develop digital literacy in ourselves as well as in our learners.

 

 

Leadership: learning entrepreneurs, stand up!

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A delightful 6 minute talk from Derek Sivers (plus an extra at the end) which explains that it is those who follow who give leaders their power. A leader without any followers is a loner. This is a great talk that is worth showing anybody who is interested in making a change in their own lives or the lives of others.

It is also one of those films that can be shown, as it is, to students, to get them to reflect on peer pressure and influence and to encourage them to think about the reasons behind any of the choices that they make. 

I’ve written about the concept of a ‘learning entrepreneur’; a learner who is hungry not for material wealth and power but for intellectual wealth and power. I think this film does a great job of reassuring anybody who is excited by their own learning, but feels that this makes them an outsider. I am sure there’s a tie-in here with the powerful Apple adverts of the 80’s too…

Engaging learners & leading changes

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Simon Sinek unpicks the importance of why we do what we do in his talk about leading change here. In using the brain as a model, he provides a powerful insight into how leaders should construct their message or sell their product. In doing so, he highlights the way in which we are physiologically wired to respond to the world we encounter.

We first experience the world through our emotions. The part of our brain that is activated when we find ourselves in a new situation is our most primitive, reptilian brain, the amygdala. Very soon after this, our rational, language-functioning part of the brain starts to make sense of what we are feeling and sensing. Finally, we formulate a considered response and can make an informed decision about what we are going to do or say. All of this happens in a matter of milli-seconds (probably less, I’m sure somebody can tell me).

On watching this, I wondered whether we could design and then communicate learning in a similar way. If we did, it would look something like this:

(1) WHY are we learning this today? This appeals to the emotional brain of our learners. Particularly if it is reinforced with a smile, a greeting and energy that betrays our own excitement and passion for what the lesson is about to cover.

(2) HOW are we going to learn today? At this point, we are appealing to the rational brain of our learners. We all like to know if we are going to be asked to actually DO or SAY publicily when we are in a new situation. Just think about any workshops you’ve attended. You get that sinking feeling when the presenter, having led the session from the front for 20 minutes, without warning, asks you to interact with the people sitting near us. And this after you had understood you could get away with being an entirely passive recipient throughout the whole session. The thing is, we all like to know from the outset what will be asked of us. We need to be emotionally prepared to be sociable, whatever our age or experience.

(3) WHAT are we going to learn today? Finally, we communicate the context and the content of what we are going to learn. The WHY has put us at ease by the expert emotional stage-setting led by the person at the front. We know HOW we are going to learn; with whom and with what and where. Now, we are emotionally prepared and engaged so we can get into the ‘stuff’ of the learning.

I’ve started to use this as a framework for lesson design and it really seems to work. Admittedly, I do still find it uncomfortable as it contradicts what I was always told, particularly when using group work, “Don’t mention group work until the last minute otherwise you’ll lose ten minutes of the lesson to your students arguing over this when you’re trying to convey the lesson aims.” But I now find that if I have organised the groups effectively, and established a culture where group work is a regular feature of learning, any discussion of the groups by the students is simply a vital component of their emotional readiness to learn. If the WHY is explained well enough, you cut down on much of any consternation expressed by the students.

Independent Learning: Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose

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Daniel Pink shares his research on autonomy here. With this, he provides us with a valuable insight into the ways in which business can get the most of out their employees by (a) engaging them (b) offering them freedom and (c) enabling them to get really good at stuff. On watching this talk, I wondered if it was possible to consider giving students the 20% time that Pink talks about.

I have since discovered, thanks to the power of Twitter, that many teachers are already testing out the 20% rule in their classrooms.

Rather than offering total freedom and choice in all things, which terrifies every single control freak amongst us (and let’s face, it, that’s most teachers!), perhaps we can divide our learning ‘pie’ up into: 

(a) Task

(b) Time

(c) Group

(d) Process

And offer choices to our students in one or two of these areas within a project or a lesson.

Alternatively, we could simply ask them to plan what they would do if they were given 20% of curriculum time within a subject or topic. Once they’ve planned what they are going to do, then it’s up to them to (a) deliver and (b) reflect on how well it went so they can make more of it next time.

It also makes me wonder what we would choose to do if we were given 20% of our working week to learn and develop something of our own choosing, regardless of its connection to the curriculum. Maybe we’d reveal a new cohort of talented musicians in the maths department or water-colour painters in the PE faculty? When we ask about the learning capacities of our students, do we get the time to reflect upon and ask the same questions of ourselves? Would this help us model learning to our students, I wonder?  

Now that would surely be the mark of a genuinely learning school.

And here’s the 10 minute RSA Animate version of Daniel Pink’s message…I use these to show what I mean by ‘now draw your learning’…not intimidating at all!

Questioning: What makes a problem worth solving?

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Here’s Dan Meyer talking about the way in which we can really involve learners in their maths. I see absolutely no reason not to apply the same principles in all areas of the curriculum. Broken down, Meyer advocates an approach that might look a little bit like this:

So..ask the shortest question you can so that the sub-questions are drawn out by the learners in their discussions. Then let the students build the problem.

DRAW ON PRIOR LEARNING: What do we already know that will help us with this problem?

DIVERGENT THINKING & IDEAS GENERATION: What don’t we know that we need to know?

CONVERGENT THINKING & PRIORITISATION: From all the information we have, what do is going to really help us in solving the problem?

IDENTIFICATION: What IS the problem we need to solve?

Oh, and then get them to do it. Which they will be eager to because it’s now THEIR problem to solve.

 

 

 

Groupwork: Learning together & the power of collaboration

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Talks like this one from Charles Leadbeater are really useful. They can re-focus our thinking on how we can deliberately foster the skills required in effective group work. In this talk, the importance of developing collaborative-working skills in readiness for the future is very well argued. I would add here that for learners to succeed right NOW, they need to be effective group worker right NOW. Ultimately, if we are to fully utilise the social dimension of humanity, it is far too important to be left to chance. It, just like our other capacities, needs to be mindfully practised and explicitly developed. Our classrooms and school communities could be the hot-houses for just such collaboration. 

I’ve been doing some work on what we mean by ‘group work’ and seeing what we can learn from collaborative learning dynamics.

When introducing group work, I always involve the learners in the assessment process:

The first question I ask students to consider is…

“What makes a quality team member?” In doing this, I ask them to identify what they would like to see, hear and feel when they are being or working with a quality team member. In this way, they can start to formulate their own quality standards for the challenges they are about to face. This becomes their success criteria for the whole learning process. It also generates a student-led plenary discussion both during and after the challenge. This in turn, encourages the students to reflect on the product of their learning IN LIGHT OF THE PROCESS.

The way in which we design learning needs to be as carefully planned as every other aspect of the lesson. So whenever I’m deciding what groups they will work in, I have these as a quick check list:

What is the purpose of the activity – will this group structure and combination of learners enable them to achieve the learning aims?

What are the pre-existing skills, knowledge and understanding in the group; are these well matched/ balanced within the group?

What roles might the group members adopt to ensure that skills and tasks are well matched? (facilitator; team rep; resources manager; time keeper; scribe etc)

What is the social age of the learners; how can we help learners both speak AND listen to each other?

What is the cognitive age of the learners; are they all at the same level of competency – do they need to be for this task?

What is the emotional age of the learners; how will the group members cope when they struggle or face disappointment?

How will I interact with learners; my language needs to praise effort alongside achievement – post-it notes work really well for this, rather than direct interventions that disrupt the group dynamic.

In what ways will I make the skills and competencies I want the students to develop explicit to them throughout the lesson?

If you have any thoughts on this or reflections on how you organise group work, please leave a comment.