Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Did You Know 3.0 (non-linguistic representations)
Wow!!! The Did you know 3.0 is powerful!!! Please watch this and share with others. What struck me with this presentation was the understanding that students today will be expected to "train" for careers that do not yet exist....so problem solving, the ability generalize and apply are paramount in the development of our curriculum standards. Although Non-linguistic representations are not until chapter six, I think they may be the most important element in the effect classroom because they facilitate the transfer, understanding, and application of knowledge in non- specific ways! The concepts presented in this video~ please watch. (for those of you on the Cherokee County Filter....I'll get it posted on our linx page....
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I have seen that. It is very interesting and challenging. We are certainly going to have to change to be able to prepare students to think and learn on their own. Knowledge is no longer enough. Students must know how to gather, evaluate, analyze, create and then apply their knowlege.
ReplyDeleteI just watched this. Half way through I stopped and called my 14 year old son in the room and we watched it over together. It is hard to realize all this information presented is a reality when we live here in the small mountain towns. I consider myself pretty well rounded about the world, but how do we get parents to understand this and support the educational processes when they themselves have not ever been out of Murphy?
ReplyDeleteI teach kindergarten. I am always "teaching them to think about thinking". I just don't think the population as a whole understands the maginitude that the technology around us is evolving. To give children the tools of "common sense" as my granny would call it would seem to be one of the greatest things we could give them. Thinking about way things are done, could be improved, or done entire differently. I know I too am rambling on but let me give you one example. I am trying to teach a student teacher in my classroom to let the children open their own packs of ketchup at lunch. I know seems like something so petty. So many care takers(whoever is taking care of the children) are just doing things for them (i.e. opening their ketchup, the car door, tying their shoes, etc.) that the children are not learning to do (or think) for themselves. I explained to my student teacher to let them try to figure out a way to open the ketchup...even if that means going to get the scissors (which our lunch room ladies keep to use) to open it with. At least they figured out a solution to their own problems. Now, please understand I don't let them go without ketchup! I just don't open it for them until they can show or tell me how they have tried and then I show them a process to do it. Yes, it takes some of my lunch. So many times in life, classrooms, etc. we try to over simplify things for our convience, schedule, etc. that we loose sight of the skills we are not teaching children. Even I want to just get through some days (holiday parties especially):) But for the most part I think we have to look at the bigger picture.
Renee-
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to hear that. I hear a lot of "my babies" about the kindergartners in our school and that often leads to statements like "our babies can't learn math, our babies can't do all that phonics, our babies can't log in to the computer, our babies CAN'T..." and it drives me crazy.
I say "why can't they? All the other 5 year olds can!" Is there something wrong with ours?! If so, how do we fix it?! It sounds to me like you are fixing it!
The "other" Renee
I have also seen this video and showed it to my students. I was educated by it and I thought since it had to do with them they should see it too. Many of my students couldn't believe it -- many of them think they will get a job right of high school and be fine! I tried to stress the important of the information -- in hopes that they would see the bigger picture.
ReplyDeleteOn a personal note - as a mother this makes me more aware of how to prepare my own child for her future.
Good morning! I have a 7yo and a 2yo...it's jaw dropping to realize they will probably become something that hasn't been invented yet! Jeana hit the nail on the head! Problem solving, critical and creative thinking skills, ability to see "big pictures" are the skills we must equip our students with TODAY in order for them to have a hope of being prepared for tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I think the breadth of our curriculum makes this more difficult than it ought to be. It seems to me, we were educated with a "post holes" mentality. We dug deep into a concept, mastered it, added it to what we knew, made connections with our prior learning, assimillated (sp?) the information and dug a new post hole to start it all over again. Today's curriculum in a veritable smorgasboard of ideas with a "try me now" mentality. Tomorrow we'll try something new...and the next day...and the next day... I don't see mastery as a goal nearly as much as I see it as an ideal. Our third grade EOG pretest scores county wide beg the question are we testing what the curriculum says we teach? I can't believe our kids were THAT unprepared...I've seen the work that goes into those primary grades, but obviously there is a disconnect SOMEWHERE. And just so everyone is clear...I have ISSUES with the folks OUTSIDE of Cherokee County...not our teachers, staff, students...TPTB that "decide" what's in the best interests of our students...
This video stirred up a lot of emotion in me...can you tell? I'll climb off my soap box now.
Ronda-
ReplyDeleteNo, we could not hear any emotion in that post!
On the good news side, the state has realized the overload of the curriculum and the framework for change and the movement towards a more integrated, essential standards curriculum is a part of the attempt to fix it. Maybe there is hope yet?! :)
It is hard to balance doing the right thing for the students with doing the fair thing for students. On one hand, I wish we had more control over our curriculum. On the other, what would happen to students who do not have peple locally that are able or willing to set appropriate standards? There is a lot of research that shows that schools with higher proportions of poor and minority students have more inexperienced teachrs. In addition,in high poverty schools there is almost double the amount of teachrs have less than three years of experience than in other schools. The same is also true for high minority schools. If there is not some type of standardization of curriculum, what will these students get?
There is a power point you can see here: http://opi.mt.gov/PDF/Assessment/conf/Presentations/07TUE_KEY.ppt
This shows the problem for students. Those who need the most, get the least if there is not a set standard. That is a large part of what state mandated curriculum is trying to fix. This is really an ongoing issue we have to address because we are moving, as seen in this video, to a global society where my students in the middle of the mountains are going to have to compete with the children who learned math in Singapore. It will not matter where they are from, they will still have to compete with the rest of the world.
I was finally able to see this video. For some reason it had been taken down (or I just couldn't access it) but I had seen an earlier version. I am still in awe at the magnitude of what is already out there and what is yet to come.
ReplyDeleteWhat does this mean for our students? Well, to me it means a future that is going to move so fast it will be unbelievable. It means that I will probably not be able to help my child with her homework in a couple of years. It means that what I think I know about technology and globalization is already obsolete and I am still trying to teach it. It means that education never ends for any of us in education if we want to keep up with the students.
Being from the 'old' school (not necessarily age wise either) I have always touted that nothing can ever fully replace the book. There is just something about turning those pages and getting lost in the story. With the readers that are out there now, such as Amazon's Kindle, I am beginning to wonder. Coming from the age of the 33's (those are vinyl records for those of you young-uns who have no idea what I'm talking about) I have seen many types of media and technology come and go. And at the time, no, I did not know.
This is a must see for everyone. Really good stuff. Thanks, Jeana, for sharing this and making me really think outside the box.
Being creative with instruction can enable us to utilize student interests and strengths to assist teaching and learning. One nonlinguistic approach is kinesthetic activities that involve physical movement. Although I incorporate movement into my instructional time, I feel academic demands limit our ability to incorporate more dramatizations, dance, and music in our instructional day.
ReplyDeleteWhen working at another school, I work closely with the occupational therapist. She and I often engaged in various co-teaching approaches- most often we used the STATION approach. This gave us numerous opportunities to share resources and exchange ideas. She was the first professional I knew who actively used "brain gym" activities to meet the needs of children with multiple disabilities. It was fun to see how this technique awakened their senses.
Wow!! I learned a lot through this video. I had to wait to watch it at school on the internet because I have much faster internet access at school (which I LOVE).
ReplyDeleteI must admit that the area of technology is not one of my strengths yet. This video is a vivid reminder that it clearly needs to be! So many people are learning through technology now. It is important in the field of education to keep up with the times so that we can better relate to our students.
After watching this I am reminded of the article in last week's paper about how students in Andrews can take a class without the teacher even being there through technology. I enjoyed reading that article. Like Ronda, I am amazed that my children may have a job that has not even been invented yet. Who knows what technology will be like in about 20 years. We cannot even imagine!
The video was informing, wow, but also a little disturbing to me. I consider myself a thinker so when we throw up #'s like we have this many kids and China and India have this born each year, it doesn't compute. They naturally would have more kids born each year, they have extremely larger populations. Several things tick me off. One is that anybody refer to my students as "babies". THEY ARE NOT BABIES!!! Nothing makes me madder, quicker than that. They are preschoolers, 4 and 5 years old. They hardly qualify as infants anylonger.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that ticks me off is that everyone acts like we are going to H*** in a handbasket. We live in a great country, one that is in serious economic distress right now. But our kids are just as smart, and use technology just as well as any other kid around the world. You don't believe it, ask any middle schooler, high schooler, shoot ask an elementary student and they can find you just about any info you want from the net. We live in a time of technology and sometimes I think that is very scary.
How does a computer become smarter than a person. Can it grow, develop??? It is a machine. I don't get it. Does it have a brain that expands or what. Someone built it and gave it it's abilities so how does it become smarter than it's creator? Why is having more babies or committing to a work for a shorter amount of time a good thing????
What about committment, responsibility, integrity, common sense, brain power (without technology), MANNERS? Are these things less important, obsolete? I don't get it. I think we live in a much better nation, even if statistics say we aren't #1. Have you noticed how everybody international market declined when Americas did? We are very important, I don't care what anyone says. Sorry I guess I need to get off my soapbox.