I was so inspired by this week’s reading from “How People Learn” that just 20 minutes ago I tossed my planned lesson for my 5:00 class today. I didn’t really like it anyway. . . it was a boring powerpoint. As I was driving to the college this morning, I was listening to NPR on the radio. This morning’s topic, along with the Phillies win was the Obama infomercial. Additionally the BBC was commenting on the 70th anniversary of “The War of the Worlds.” Right there, coming out of my radio was the impetus for a really great and inspired class. My 5:00 class is called Media Programming. It is about why broadcast and cable networks, put shows on at certain times. It includes learning about programming strategies for both television and radio and covers demographics and day-parts and all that media terminology. For the most part this stuff is not new to the students, they have heard it in some introductory class before they get to me. My real challenge is to determine whether or not they understand it and then to find out if they know why they should understand it. I do try my best to make it interesting but there are times when that can be really tough.
So, inspired by the reading I tossed my lecture and will be spending time today relating current events to concepts the class should already know. We will cover the “War of the Worlds” broadcast by having class members contribute what they know to the conversation. We will discuss the effects that this event had on those who listened and we will talk about why the radio station chose to air this program in the manner it did. They will listen to the short segment on the original broadcast from BBC News Hour. From there we will move to a more current media occurrence – The Obama Infomercial. I will have the class go online and get overnight ratings, info on the target audience and demographics, and any background on this political ad technique and then we will come back together for a discussion on the why’s, the how’s and success of this event from the standpoint of the networks and of Obama. By using this current event to illustrate all the terms and practices we have covered, I will be able to create an engaged learning community, see if the students are really aware of the applications and programming strategies we have covered, and use concrete examples to clear up confusion. To be sure they “get it” I will post a required discussion topic in the Blackboard space that will extend our in-class conversation.
I am really excited about this change in plans! The discussion could lead to so many great insights and learning opportunities for the class, and as I am always looking to understand and improve . . . it could lead to learning opportunities for me as well.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Why Football Coaches Should Never Teach Geometry . . . . .
This week’s reading was very beneficial to me as an educator but it also sent me back to when I was a student and brought to mind two very different experiences that I had in high school and college. Some of my “favorite” teachers were the ones who had all four perspectives mentioned in the chapter incorporated in their class. The ones who I would say I disliked were teachers who were lacking one or all of the perspectives mentioned in the chapter.
In high school, I had a geometry teacher, who also happened to be the football coach. Mr. Sorber was one of my least favorite teachers and I can honestly say that I learned very little about geometry from this man. In his classroom we sat in rows, would listen to him talk a bit and then would go straight down the rows to give our answers to the homework problems that had been assigned the previous class. He was not a happy person. (Our football team was not very good.) If you did not give the right answer he would humiliate you and then go to the next person. There was such a sense of dread in that class that the students came together as a community out of fear. We learned some geometry but not from the teacher, rather from each other in an effort to survive! So, the class was not student centered, not knowledge centered, and certainly not assessment centered. The only one of the four perspectives we touched on was a sense of community . . . a community of students who were scared to death. While Mr. Sorber was responsible, in a back handed way, for creating that community, he certainly gets no credit for the little knowledge that we gained that year.
Conversely, a professor I had in college for Comp. I, Dr. August Nigro, was one of my favorite teachers. He took the time to get to know you by talking to you, assigning papers that would allow you to mention past experiences and info about your life(student centered), provided opportunities for ideas to be shared in class(community centered), gave direction on appropriate writing techniques and how to adequately express ideas(knowledge centered), gave innovative assignments that let you apply previously acquired skills but stretch to practice new ones and took time to review your work with you(assessment centered). He never just handed back a graded paper without having a very personal conversation with you about your work. I will never forget this man. He made a huge impression on me and my writing style and much of my teaching style is reflective of his influence on me.
I am certain that designing learning environments with these four perspectives in mind is crucial to the teaching and learning process. Not only will students benefit from the learning experiences, but their personal contacts with teachers will become part of their life experience and influence them well into their future.
In high school, I had a geometry teacher, who also happened to be the football coach. Mr. Sorber was one of my least favorite teachers and I can honestly say that I learned very little about geometry from this man. In his classroom we sat in rows, would listen to him talk a bit and then would go straight down the rows to give our answers to the homework problems that had been assigned the previous class. He was not a happy person. (Our football team was not very good.) If you did not give the right answer he would humiliate you and then go to the next person. There was such a sense of dread in that class that the students came together as a community out of fear. We learned some geometry but not from the teacher, rather from each other in an effort to survive! So, the class was not student centered, not knowledge centered, and certainly not assessment centered. The only one of the four perspectives we touched on was a sense of community . . . a community of students who were scared to death. While Mr. Sorber was responsible, in a back handed way, for creating that community, he certainly gets no credit for the little knowledge that we gained that year.
Conversely, a professor I had in college for Comp. I, Dr. August Nigro, was one of my favorite teachers. He took the time to get to know you by talking to you, assigning papers that would allow you to mention past experiences and info about your life(student centered), provided opportunities for ideas to be shared in class(community centered), gave direction on appropriate writing techniques and how to adequately express ideas(knowledge centered), gave innovative assignments that let you apply previously acquired skills but stretch to practice new ones and took time to review your work with you(assessment centered). He never just handed back a graded paper without having a very personal conversation with you about your work. I will never forget this man. He made a huge impression on me and my writing style and much of my teaching style is reflective of his influence on me.
I am certain that designing learning environments with these four perspectives in mind is crucial to the teaching and learning process. Not only will students benefit from the learning experiences, but their personal contacts with teachers will become part of their life experience and influence them well into their future.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
DeFragging Our Brains . . . . .
In the book How People Learn it is stated, “guided learning and learning from individual experiences both play important roles in the functional reorganization of the brain.” I completely agree with this statement based on experiences from my own teaching over the last 19 years.
Two specific examples come to mind:
1. 10 years ago I had a student in my Television Studio Production course whose name was Ken. He was twice my age and had many experiences to share with me and the class. Ken and I quickly became friends. He had revealed to me that he was a Vietnam vet, that both he and his wife were cancer survivors and that he had been recently diagnosed with MS. He explained that when you have MS, signals do not pass between nerve cells at high speeds and that affects your Central Nervous system. He was taking my class because he and his doctor believed that learning things he had never learned before would regenerate or activate unused parts of his brain and nervous system which in turn would help him control the disease.
2. At an In- Service Day activity at Buck County Community College, the faculty was introduced to a gentleman who gave a presentation on how our brains work. He talked mostly about how folks with Dyslexia learn and showed pictures of MRI’s that were color coded to show us which parts of the brain were activated in problem solving. It was intriguing how the comparison of the MRI’s from the dyslexic and non dyslexic person showed that entirely different parts of the brain were working in each individual to solve the same problem. It was a prime example of how people’s brains organize material differently based on previous learning and experience.
Both of these examples show how different the brain can react in different situations and how it accesses and stores information based on experience and learning. When I think back to educational experiences where I feel I learned the most, they are all in a situation where there was hands on learning, an actual activity. . an experience. In college, we would take our remote production truck to cover the football games or another live event. The learning was intense, very active, charged and at times stressful, but it was robust and totally worthwhile. I am certain that many foundational items from that learning experience are accessed by my brain as I learn new things each day.
The concept of experiential learning is a very important one, especially to those of us in Higher Ed. We are faced with an interesting challenge. In many cases, we are the last line of guided learning that many individuals will experience before they enter the workforce. We need to find out what experiences our students come with, figure out how to build on those and we then need to provide them with additional experiences that prepare them for the road ahead.
Two specific examples come to mind:
1. 10 years ago I had a student in my Television Studio Production course whose name was Ken. He was twice my age and had many experiences to share with me and the class. Ken and I quickly became friends. He had revealed to me that he was a Vietnam vet, that both he and his wife were cancer survivors and that he had been recently diagnosed with MS. He explained that when you have MS, signals do not pass between nerve cells at high speeds and that affects your Central Nervous system. He was taking my class because he and his doctor believed that learning things he had never learned before would regenerate or activate unused parts of his brain and nervous system which in turn would help him control the disease.
2. At an In- Service Day activity at Buck County Community College, the faculty was introduced to a gentleman who gave a presentation on how our brains work. He talked mostly about how folks with Dyslexia learn and showed pictures of MRI’s that were color coded to show us which parts of the brain were activated in problem solving. It was intriguing how the comparison of the MRI’s from the dyslexic and non dyslexic person showed that entirely different parts of the brain were working in each individual to solve the same problem. It was a prime example of how people’s brains organize material differently based on previous learning and experience.
Both of these examples show how different the brain can react in different situations and how it accesses and stores information based on experience and learning. When I think back to educational experiences where I feel I learned the most, they are all in a situation where there was hands on learning, an actual activity. . an experience. In college, we would take our remote production truck to cover the football games or another live event. The learning was intense, very active, charged and at times stressful, but it was robust and totally worthwhile. I am certain that many foundational items from that learning experience are accessed by my brain as I learn new things each day.
The concept of experiential learning is a very important one, especially to those of us in Higher Ed. We are faced with an interesting challenge. In many cases, we are the last line of guided learning that many individuals will experience before they enter the workforce. We need to find out what experiences our students come with, figure out how to build on those and we then need to provide them with additional experiences that prepare them for the road ahead.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
"Where before there was a spectator, let there now be a participant" (Bruner, 1983:60).
After reading the information on “How Children Learn,” I really related to the section on “Learning to Read and Tell Stories.” I have always believed that having a parent read to their children was part of growing up. I have fond memories of my mother and father reading to me alone and also to me and my brother together. I remember certain books and purchased those for my own children because I loved them so much. That reading time with my parents brings back warm and comfortable memories but apparently it also provided an impetus to the growth of my language skills and my connections to personal experiences. I think most parents know that reading to your children is a good thing but I am sure that they don’t think through all the learning skills that this activity enhances.
I see reading to your children as a bridge to many skills that help children develop. Reading leads to practice with language, increase in vocabulary, development of narrative skills, dialogue and comprehension-fostering activities. It is also the stimulus for parents and children to share common experiences that come up as a result of reading a book and thereby increases the opportunity for communication.
I must confess that I read more to my son Steve, than I did to my twins, Sydney and Samantha. Steve is 2 ½ years older so we had time together, just the two of us. When the twins came along, I still spent time reading to all of them but things were much busier at our house. I can see a difference in the writing levels of Steve as compared to the twins and also in their ability to tell a story verbally. Steve has always had a great grasp of vocabulary and organization where the twins must work much harder to accomplish the same thing. I don’t know if I would attribute the difference solely to less reading time with the twins, but I am certain it played a factor. The girls are hard pressed now, at age 15, to tell me a lot of book titles they remember from when they were younger, although they can remember a few. Steve, at age 18, can rattle off an entire list and frequently reminds me of one of his favorites, “The Grouchy Ladybug” by Eric Carle. Steve and I read this book many times and when he was about 4 he came to me one morning to tell me that he had an interesting dream. He proceeded to recall his dream in the form of a story with the same rhythm and sentence structure as in the “Grouchy Ladybug.” Steve replaced the Ladybug in the original story with his sister, “Grumpy Sydney” who led a band of escaped animals from the zoo on her motorcycle!!!
Sydney really isn’t grumpy and she and Samantha and Steve will occasionally dig out some of the old books, and we STILL will sit and read them together.
I see reading to your children as a bridge to many skills that help children develop. Reading leads to practice with language, increase in vocabulary, development of narrative skills, dialogue and comprehension-fostering activities. It is also the stimulus for parents and children to share common experiences that come up as a result of reading a book and thereby increases the opportunity for communication.
I must confess that I read more to my son Steve, than I did to my twins, Sydney and Samantha. Steve is 2 ½ years older so we had time together, just the two of us. When the twins came along, I still spent time reading to all of them but things were much busier at our house. I can see a difference in the writing levels of Steve as compared to the twins and also in their ability to tell a story verbally. Steve has always had a great grasp of vocabulary and organization where the twins must work much harder to accomplish the same thing. I don’t know if I would attribute the difference solely to less reading time with the twins, but I am certain it played a factor. The girls are hard pressed now, at age 15, to tell me a lot of book titles they remember from when they were younger, although they can remember a few. Steve, at age 18, can rattle off an entire list and frequently reminds me of one of his favorites, “The Grouchy Ladybug” by Eric Carle. Steve and I read this book many times and when he was about 4 he came to me one morning to tell me that he had an interesting dream. He proceeded to recall his dream in the form of a story with the same rhythm and sentence structure as in the “Grouchy Ladybug.” Steve replaced the Ladybug in the original story with his sister, “Grumpy Sydney” who led a band of escaped animals from the zoo on her motorcycle!!!
Sydney really isn’t grumpy and she and Samantha and Steve will occasionally dig out some of the old books, and we STILL will sit and read them together.
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